Scott Frank, Founder of Stone Steps Financial, has built a successful firm by taking a more holistic approach to planning. His approach is centered on letting go of his own biases and finding a way to connect with clients effectively. In addition to building a firm with over $70M in AUM, he has created a podcast with over 40,000 downloads per month across all podcast platforms. In this episode, Scott teaches us his unique financial planning formula and how it helps you grow when starting from scratch.
Scott Frank, Founder of Stone Steps Financial, has built a successful firm by taking a more holistic approach to planning. His approach is centered on letting go of his own biases and finding a way to connect with clients effectively. In addition to building a firm with over $70M in AUM, he has created a podcast with over 40,000 downloads per month across all podcast platforms. In this episode, Scott teaches us his unique financial planning formula and how it helps you grow when starting from scratch.
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Scott: We feel like when, especially when we're younger and we have a lot of technical knowledge, we feel the way to show that we're trustworthy is to tell everyone our technical knowledge. So we almost vomit on people. All of the stuff that we know but like I don't go to the doctor's office to have him tell me about all the details of the labs that he ran. I just want to know if there's something I need to be worried about. And I think we have to remember that's the frame of reference we should be utilizing when we work with [00:01:00] people is our job is to explain it at the highest level, the simplest way. And then when you're done with that, just simply say, Jason, would you like to know more?
Jason: Welcome to The Advisor Journey, a podcast by Altruist dedicated to giving advisors the edge they need with proven RIA growth strategies. Each week, Dasarte Yarnway and I will have hard-hitting conversations about the topics that matter most to the modern RIA. How to scale, how to maximize efficiency, and how to effectively reach your goals.
It's real advice from people who've really done it, and we're so glad you're here.
Dasarte: Welcome to another episode of The Advisor Journey. I'm your co-host Dasarte Yarnway, along with my partner in wealth, Jason Wenk, and today we have a very special guest, somebody that's been dear to my whole existence in this independent space since I've entered it. A good friend and a [00:02:00] great advisor, Scott Frank.
Scott, how you doing?
Scott: I'm good. How are you doing?
Dasarte: Really well. As I mentioned, I feel extremely blessed with, my newborn daughter and now meeting you today. It's like the perfect day. It's great to have you on the show. Thank you. I'm sure we're gonna share a bunch of gems, but we're here for FutureProof, right? So how has your conference experience been thus far?
Scott: It's been amazing. This conference, you couldn't have a better conference for me because I like to wake up and surf at dawn. Like I literally got to pack up more surfboards than like my wife would put suitcases to go to Europe.
Jason: Are you sure you're going to a conference for work?
Scott: Exactly. It's so fun. And just the people you know, it's like all of Fin twiz together for sure. Which is not something that you get to have happen very often. So you get to meet people that you, otherwise but you don't know. Does that make sense?
Dasarte: Yeah. I think that my take on it is that I don't see myself sitting in a ballroom in a stale conference ever again.
I think they got that yeah. Although there's things that could be improved, right? With everything. Yeah. I was burning up on stage. But I think that other conference will begin to pick from this whole experience. And I think [00:03:00] totally it's gonna change the landscape for conferences moving forward.
What do you think?
Jason: I think so I mean I have, I think there's gonna be certain things that become like new industry standard. I think that the the social aspect of the conference is the best I've been to actually, I think ever. Just because you're not constrained, right? It's like a resort.
It's like you have a town, you have an entire, you have all of these things. So I also wanna say I think Huntington Beach, what an underrated. Like I would've never picked that in my head as a place for a financial advisor conference. But I'm like, what a great place? Like just the walkability, like it's got a, it's something for everybody.
Plenty of lodging close to both LAX and to John Wayne. So I'm like, man, like they hit the nail on the head there. And the only thing I obviously, I would, I think could be maybe an improvement. So Matt and Crew, John, when you listen to this and then, the unsolicited advice from someone that probably, I shouldn't give it, but I think there should actually less sessions, right? Less like maybe there's less, but they're more impactful, they're more meaningful because the rapid fire, like every [00:04:00] 20, 30 minutes, like turnover on the stage. Is hard to get. Like it's hard to build an agenda like a, if you're attending, you're like, oh, I want to go pick these six, these are like six things I wanna see.
It's it's overwhelming the amount of things happening, and I think it. Might've made it easy for people to miss some really good stuff. Yeah, because it just was almost too much optionality. So I think if they got that I think you can make outdoor work.
They got a little bit unlucky, right? It's 300 and 50 days in a year in California would've been great, but there's 15 days where it's a little hot and humid and this was the week. .
Scott: So I fully agree. I think if they just made it So the draw is bigger for the big events. And maybe ideally you conversation that becomes actionable after the event and then you create a space for people to go do stuff together. So okay, now everyone go learn how to surf or everyone go do yoga, but then people get to make community out of this event. I think that's, and people already are a community, so I think they've already nailed it.
Jason: There was this s really cool event I went to and said, they actually on the agenda, they have like a three hour block. And the three hour block was just that type of, it [00:05:00] was like, Hey, you can sign up, or do you want to go on a mountain biking tour? Or do you want to go on a, do you wanna go surfing? Do you wanna go hiking? Do you wanna do this? And then like you just choose your adventure.
And then now you go and you build these relationships with people in a smaller setting doing an, activity. That's so much more valuable oftentimes than listening to another conversation about what CRM you should use or something. Like it's just something you can take for 10 years, those relationships you build.
Dasarte: Yeah. Absolutely. Scott, I don't know who doesn't know you. You're a friend of Altruist, you're a friend of mine.. But for those who haven't heard of you give them a brief introduction of who you are, what you do.
Scott: Yeah. I answer people's financial questions. Yeah. That's what I do. Simple. And I do that by listening with empathy first. And then once I understand, and the client understands what matters to them then that becomes the lens through which we look to make all their financial choices.
Dasarte: Absolutely. Give us that journey. Because you actually taught me to be a more understanding, empathetic financial advisor, which I feel like is a underrated skill in our space. We're all focused on the numbers, but we're getting the people wrong. As my [00:06:00] friend in Emlen would say. But you're getting the people right, and you're supporting them with the numbers.
So how did you, tell me about that journey. What did that take? How did you do it?
Scott: I just am meeting Jason for the first time now knowing that he's from Michigan. I grew up in the Midwest and I grew up in a Midwest family where you don't really show emotion, you really just wrestle it down in there and don't, don't talk about it much, right?
So I started my journey in financial planning, focusing on the IQ side of things. So I got my CFA and then I got my CFP and I thought I had all the answers for people. And , when I started my own firm, Stone Steps in 2015, I was like people are just gonna sit down and I'm gonna solve their problems and this is gonna be super easy.
And there was only one problem with that, I was gonna solve their problems. I was in the equation, and I had this kind of thought, and I think it's the thought that a lot of advisors have. You build up all this technical knowledge, and in a sense, you think you're a problem solver for people.
And I would actually say, if you take it a little step further, you might think that you're the hero, right? like your job's to step in and [00:07:00] solve their problems for them, like some superpower that you have. But what I quickly realized, If I don't understand the intrinsic motivation of the client, what drives them.
I can tell them what to do 12 ways to Sunday, but they are not gonna follow through. And actually since then there's been, I wouldn't say it's a study, but, Russ Allen Prince put a little article in Financial Planning Magazine in December of 2019 on holistic planning and he asked advisors, When you give this plan to people six months later, what percentage of completion has happened?
And the startling thing to me was 30% of people did 20% or more of their plan. So all these people showed up, they all got financial plans, and let's just say there's 10 items to do. So out of 10 people, three of them did two or more. 50% of them did two or less. Yeah. And 18% did none. And so I used to think that those people were bad clients.
And what I realized was I was a bad advisor. [00:08:00] Yeah. I was solving their problems, but I never got in touch with what mattered to them. And so through this little journey over the years, I went through the Kinder Institute training and became, actually, I'm a trainer for some of that now, like part of the passion of what I do to help other advisors.
But basically what we did was we learned how to listen with empathy and help advisors help clients help themselves. So you basically learn to, you're in a sense, you're untraining yourself as an advisor. To let go of what I would call the I/ME minds or that's what we're taught. Anytime you have I/ME or mine in a sentence, there is a bias built into it and the job of an advisor or a guide at their highest level, in my opinion, is really your job is to help hold a mirror up.
If we're working together right now, I wanna hold a mirror up for you to figure out what matters most to you, what are your top priorities, right? And ideally help you start solving your own problems rather. And that's probably the biggest problem for most advisors is we think our job is to be like, I have the best process. And I have the best asset [00:09:00] allocation and asset location. But at the end of the day, like all of that is going to be taken carw of. Luckily Altruist is already working on that. Like you're creating an amazing solution that makes it push button to manage assets well. So eventually if you don't start focusing on EQ and helping people, you're not gonna have a job.
Yeah. Basically the intent was I wanted to help people. I started by being the hero. I realized our job is to be the guide rather than the hero. We are not Luke Skywalker. Like we are Yoda. Yeah. That's our job in finance is to be the guide for them on their journey, helping them understand that they will always know more about their own life and their own finances than I ever will.
But I have this little understanding of how to help people in this little area of finance. And if I can do that for them, it will help them hopefully live a slightly better life.
Dasarte: That's the show thank you so much for joining us. . .
Jason: I have a question because like the math nerd me, like I'm still fixated on like that, the study, right?
Of how [00:10:00] 20% only was it? Was it 30% complete 20? Yeah. I'm curious, do you track at all what, like the implementation of your planning?
Scott: I don't, and that's part of the problem of being such a small firm, right? It's I know for a fact that the follow, just the feeling of follow through for clients once I incorporated what like George would call it life planning, but a lot of people could call it emotional intelligence or active listening.
Once that was incorporated and you started to understand what the clients wanted and what their drivers were and what their intrinsic value, telling someone you need to go get life insurance, Jason, you're gonna die one day, does nothing for you. But if I know your children's names and I know that they're in your heart's core, like some of the most important people in your life, and I'm like, Hey Jason, if you don't take care of this and there's a zombie apocalypse from you and your wife are out to dinner, who's gonna take care of the kids?
And are they gonna have enough? And I can just pause with you and have eye contact with you. And in that moment you'll feel. And that will motivate you to go do it. When you realize that people do not think themselves into action, but they feel themselves into action. Like it's a total game changer [00:11:00] cuz then you realize our job is to help people feel feelings.
And it sounds scary as advisors, but we all feel feelings all the time. You walk into a room and you know if you're spouse is upset. or if a little kid's about to cry. We're social creatures. We feel it all the time, but we've been desensitized to it and told not to do it. , and I think the coolest part about our business now is that technology is coming to a place again with Al Ultras and what you guys are building and what others are building, where it's gonna make it so that a lot of the thinking work that we do can largely be.
So now we can spend a lot more time focusing on the human side of our business and helping them actually step into who they're meant to be.
Jason: Sure. I know normally we're not supposed to name names of companies, but you got your Rock and Element shirt on. I have to imagine yes, I I've gotten know the Elements team pretty well, but scoping out the product, like it, it feels like that just is, in some ways that's like the codification of this progress, right?
Nothing's actually ever fully complete. No. It's like there's always some level of progress that you're making, maybe in some like trade-offs you're [00:12:00] making. It's a really beautiful visualization, I think for someone to kinda understand like where they're at. It's not oh, you failed.
It's more no, this is just kinda where you are. But that's, it's cool.
Scott: The whole job of financial planning is that, Planning is a process not a thing, right? And it's very much so like we were geeking out on surfing earlier, right? Surfing. You just show up and the wave is the wave and it's just a matter of can, are you capa?
Should you go out today? Are you capable of handling what's in front of you? Are you gonna be? Is there excitement and it's fun, or is it so scary that it's so much fearful that you shouldn't even touch that water today? That's just life as it is every day. And the cool thing I love about Elements is that elements basically brings financial planning to the present moment.
It just simply helps people look at how much do you save? How much do you spend? How much do you pay in debt? How much do you pay in taxes? That should add up to a hundred. What are you doing? And then what's the next choice you can make to improve your life right now? So let's stop focusing on, you need to save 4 million by age 65, [00:13:00] and let's just bring it to the present moment and look at what can you do right now to improve your financial life.
And so if we view it as financial monitoring versus financial planning I think what'll happen is a lot more people will get help and a lot more people will. They won't be as scared by it, and there won't be as much shame around it, right? Because if you don't have, if I'm supposed to have $500,000 by a certain age and I need to walk into an advisor's office and show 'em, I only have 50 grand, I have all this shame and emotion around that.
I don't want to do that. If instead I can just give you a simple app. You monitor stuff yourself. And once you get really complex, if you want help, go get an advisor to help you, but you'll have all your data. I think that's totally the future, and whether it's Elements or some other. Who knows, but like they're at least giving it a good whack.
Jason: I think it's sledding I think this thing is, it's progress, not perfection . And so that's what it feels like, if you get to get get it right. Everybody should be trying to make progress. Yeah. There's no shame in that, right?
Dasarte: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Speaking about progress and just everything that you mentioned about making people feel, I imagine that's a lot of what you're telling prospects when they come into your office, right? You're telling [00:14:00] them exactly what you just said, you're trying. You're gonna help them feel their way into action.
You started from scratch. You have a podcast that a lot of people listen to you at 70 million from scratch, which is a big deal. Like how did you grow so fast with this approach? Did you, was that a part of it?
Scott: Man, if you ask my wife, we did not grow fast. It took way longer to grow than we thought it would.
I think honestly, you just have to keep putting the next foot forward. I was super grateful for all the people who came before me and started their own firms, who I could look up to. Along the way, I formed some mastermind groups who really, we pull each other up when we were down and celebrate the wins.
It's hard to go talk to your buddy who doesn't understand entrepreneurship, who has a corporate job, about all the ups and downs you're going through, or even your spouse, right? So you, I think having a mastermind group was super helpful. It's just one foot in front of the other.
And the thing that I've realized again and again, which actually comes back to the idea of, what you guys are building at Altruist or like what Elements is building, it always comes back to the present moment. [00:15:00] You need to have a vision of where you want to go, but you just need to recognize that there's no way you're ever gonna hit the plan.
But isn't that what we tell clients all the time? Yeah. Carl has an awesome picture. That's you. Here, you're here's your goal. And then he draws that squiggly line. And the whole intent is none of us know the future, so let's just put down our best effort. Look at how we can optimize our time, our money, our energy, and our talent.
Put some goals out there. Go try and then iterate.
Dasarte: I love it. So talk to us about that podcast, right? Because I'm guessing you're speaking directly to your prospective clients on that show. Are you?
Scott: So we actually, James and I, so my, my, a friend of mine, James Canole, which if you don't know James, he doesn't like social media, but you should totally follow him.
His YouTube channel is pretty epic. So here's the crazy thing about James, right? Like James started, we started Real Personal Finance with the idea that we kept raising. So most financial planning firms, and I love you guys are trying to solve this too, but most financial planning firms, if I think about who they are Tesla when it had [00:16:00] the Roadster.
We are a super niche business. You need to have really high income, really high assets, and we're gonna give you crazy levels of service. And it's gonna be great, but we alienate all these other groups, right? But it's also what makes us profitable and lets us have a life. So basically those are the businesses we all go create.
And so when we started raising our own fees internally at both of our firms, and we kept turning all these people away. We were like why don't we just create a podcast where we'll get together on Mondays from two to three to five, we'll record two or three episodes and we'll just, it'll just be two CFPs, just sitting here if we're just having this conversation, but we pick a topic, how would you handle such and such?
And so we just tried to explain it in simple English that anyone could understand. and it just slowly grew. And then we, what we did was we started having people, listeners bring in questions. We started answering their questions and now what we're about to do is we're turning it into a call-in show.
So we're setting up the website so that someone will literally hit [00:17:00] speak pipes and we're gonna ask them to use anonymous names. . If it was Scott and Amanda calling in, I would turn into Sean and Angela if maybe is what we choose. I'm gonna send them Elements for them to fill out a scorecard.
They can ask three questions and James and I will show them what financial planning is on the show. So we'll have a YouTube channel doing that. And then we're gonna let them keep their data after the fact so they can monitor data, and then we're in the process of launching a group that we're gonna call Real Personal Finance Nation.
And the whole intent there is, it's like a Jenny Craig for financial planning. So like my mom back in the Midwest when I was growing up, she struggled with weight and the time she always did best was when she was either a part of Jenny Craig or Weight Watchers, right? So she was showing up at some strip mall having a conversation of accountability with people helping on their own journey.
And I was like, man, as a business we alienate this huge swath of people. So why not have financial monitoring through Elements with a podcast, with an ask me anything for once a month with the [00:18:00] advisors showing up. We still can't give advice there technically, cuz we won't be under the. RIA rules, right?
We can't give asset allocation rules, but if they need that, they could go to our firms and get like an hour of planning. Yeah. But that's the next iteration for the show.
Dasarte: We like to get under the hood. So talk to us about your growth trajectory. You said we didn't grow fast. But all the activity that you're doing, you must be tracking the engagement from clients and you have goals as you mentioned before, that you may be trying to hit. What are those goals like? How do you expect to grow from all of the things that you're doing and especially the impact that you seek to have on the community around you?
Scott: It's interesting because I don't actually. So I had my first goal and my life planning goal because when you learn life planning with the Kinder Institute, you actually you life plan someone and they life plan you.
And the person who I did that with, were actually still very good friends because what happens is you learn how to trust someone deeply in that moment because you go share the most vulnerable things you have with that person. And so that actually leads to a level of trust with an advisor relationship that makes it very hard to sever. No one's gonna [00:19:00] leave you over Bips because like you now know the family better than even a lot of the family members know the family. But my first goal was to make it so that, and I know exact I was, it was, I, the vision for me was I would have a French press where I could sit down with my wife, make a cup of coffee and tell her that she didn't have to go to work anymore.
And that happened. Like right before Covid started. So we already hit that and once we hit that, I realized it's no longer about me making more money now it's just about impact and helping other people. So it's either helping other advisors through learning more about emotional intelligence.
James and, I joke on the show all the time that our big, hairy, audacious goals, we're not gonna stop the show until the US is financially literate. That's gonna take a while, , but I actually do think that having these, getting like Jenny Craig style club, like listener groups together and having lots of advisors doing things like that will be super helpful because it will allow the nation to become more literate.
And also simplifying finance to a point where it doesn't seem scary and making it approachable. That has to be a big part of it, so it's [00:20:00] that, and then the growth of the firm. I'm not so much worried about the growth of the firm. We have three and a half of us. We have a part-time client service associate, two associate advisors.
And their jobs are really to be, to do the majority of the planning work for clients. And then I join with them anytime clients need to meet with us and grow from there.
Jason: That's awesome. So I was thinking about this when we were talking about this Jenny Craig, it made me think, like the, this is a really interesting evolution, I think for our industry because I dunno why, but I had this conversation with my wife the other day. We were talking about televisions of all random things, right? Yeah. And what we were of talking about. I was like, man, think about the fact that like 20 some years ago like it cost 30 grand to get a flat screen TV that was still all rainy, totally and crappy. Yeah. And what's happened is the evolution, right?
So today, now you can get like this most insane picture, quality, lightweight, super thin, built in all these smart TVs. There's a gazillion streaming services, right? Yeah. And that's what's interesting about, I guess when I look at our industry, I'm like, man, I feel like we're just. We haven't done that.
We haven't figured out a way to [00:21:00] produce high quality, like at scale. And that sounds like what you're building. It's trying something that is impactful. It's high quality, it's at scale. Obviously the really high touch personalized services are going to be hard to deliver at scale. Yes. But there are other ways, right?
To deliver big, meaningful outcomes to larger groups. And I think we've seen this in a lot of other industries too. Yeah. Even things like personal training. Used to be all one-on-one. Now you've got F45s right? And like Orange Theory. Peloton studios or all these things where it's it's now it's one instructor, 20, 30, 40 people. Multiple classes per day. So there's like accessibility and affordability is getting there super root for you on this one? Cause I just think like our industry's like just not quite there yet. Where we're getting real meaningful help at scale.
Scott: I also think that the battle that people have, whether it's on Twitter or Twitter over pricing or it's like someone saying well, how, what, how much service are you offering?
What's your value? I actually think that we, most of us just in a sense, have it wrong because I think at the end of the day, what the focus should be is [00:22:00] on the and it goes back to what I mentioned before about the level of execution on that study. It's the level of execution that the client is handling.
And my premise is that if you can do all the execution on your own and you know what you're doing and you're comfortable doing it, you're never gonna pay me more than $29 a month. Join us and come be a part of the accountability group and come learn at the AMAs when you have questions. But I can never give you direct advice.
You're gonna figure it all out on your own. We're just providing the app for you to do it. Great. Enjoy. If you get to a point where you have a question that you really need help, you're gonna reach out to either Root Financial at James' Firm or Stone Steps, and you're gonna say, Hey, I wanna do a financial checkup.
And in that moment, we're gonna have you sign an agreement that I'm gonna put my fiduciary hat on for one hour, and I'm gonna go answer your very specific personal financial questions. And I will do it in a regulated way. And then the final thing that will happen is there will be a very small portion of this funnel, probably 0.5% or less.
That will eventually become a client. [00:23:00] A full fledged client with full service. But what you're doing is you're just saying, look man, you can stay at a K O A, you can stay at a Ramada Limited, or you can stay at a Ritz Carlton. They're all places to stay. We don't need to fight over what price points someone should pay to spend the night somewhere.
We just need to determine what's the level of service that the client wants from an execution standpoint. And if we think of it in those terms, then you're basically just going they're all, they all should be available to the client.
Jason: I love it. I think, it reminds me of Airbnb, and I use that analogy a lot, like in the sense that you can find there's something for everybody on Airbnb, right?
Yeah. You wanna stay in a, tent in someone's backyard. Like you can do that. Or you could rent a, $50 million ocean front man. Exactly. Right? There's actually something for everybody. And that's not how like financial advice has been, it's no, actually we're gonna say no to 95% of the population.
Focus on this, it's actually kinda more like 98% and you just focus on the top two and let them fend for themselves. They'll figure it out, , maybe they can do it yourself, [00:24:00] get a \ Robinhood account, get a whatever, robo account, something. And I'm actually grateful that the industry, that there are other solutions people are trying to create, like tech enabled solutions to serve broader groups, but there's some bad actors out there for sure. Even in the, like the tech world that, no pun intended, but they're trying to be very altruistic.
But at the end of the day, if someone's charging five bucks a month and the client's got $200 in their account, that's basically not much different than predatory lending. And like Totally. That's like the level of accessibility a lot of people have when they want to get started. Like one of these micro investing apps or something like that. Yep. So kudos for doing good work and and definitely rooting for you on the scale front.
Dasarte: Yeah's fun to watch unfold. So with all of those options available, do you think that was part of the reason why you got lots of impact from having those service models available?
Scott: They're not available yet. They're in process. I'm meeting, I've met with the RIA compliance attorney about it last week. Breaking news? No, we literally we're starting a company called Guide Media. And Guide Media is going to house all educational [00:25:00] content and all listener content, and I'm building it so that my whole goal is to build it alpha, test it with someone, beta, test it with someone, and then with Elements, I just literally want to hand the playbook to all advisors who use Elements.
To basically just be like, Hey man, look, you go do this too. Because there, in my opinion, there should be hundreds of advisors with YouTube channels and podcasts and courses, that are just allowing more people to get access to financial advice.
Jason: It's better than, I'll try to stop using names, but better than that one app with short form videos where no one has a license and they talk about insurance all the time.
Scott: Exactly. That's another part of it, right? That's honestly why James and I started the podcast to begin with. It's dude, there's not enough like professionals speaking plainly to the American people about what you should do and what you shouldn't do, and calling spade.
And there's like nothing. The problem is that we as an industry are not a sexy industry, right? Like people can go on the app that you're talking about. Maybe you guys that works for you but not me. But [00:26:00] basically like you have those spots where like they're figuring out how to spin up the content to get people to put eyeballs on it.
But we need to teach advisors how to do that so that we can battle negative channels.
Jason: Yeah, I totally agree. Alright, so I I could just have a free flowing, lovely conversation about the the things that people can do to enable a better future. I think you, may have heard us talk about our mission here, which is make financial advice better, more affordable, accessible to everybody.
Scott: Yeah. It's very kindred, right? I think the way that you're doing things, so love it.
Jason: But I know that a lot of people who tune in here you're so humble because you're saying, oh, it took me a long time and I'm really not that successful. And at the end of the day so few advisors even get to 10 million or a hundred thousand dollars in revenue.
It's some more stats, for you that if most advisors, if they don't know this, but roughly 90% of advisors of RIA firms are sub $10 million in AUM if using assets as their barometer, right? Yeah. There's a lot of alternative fee schedules, but at the end of the day, that's the bulk, right?
Yeah. Like it's a huge. So we'd love that you to if you could just maybe offer okay, you're an advisor. You're trying to [00:27:00] get to that point where you can have that conversation, honey, you don't have to work anymore, right? , what are some like practical steps like, Hey, what could I do? to get to that point. Maybe two, three things. If you could, let's like distill it down to a couple pointers. A couple tips.
Scott: Yep. I do think the number one thing that you can do is learn how to actively listen with empathy and active listening is insanely, it sounds easy to do, but it's really hard to do because we all operate with our ego all the time.
And I, even the people who don't think they have an ego, just listen how often you speak and you put I, me or mine in something when you're talking back to someone. So just learning how to hold space with someone and be like, Jason, how are you today in the moment you tell me how you are. I don't come back with how I am.
I just check in with you. Oh, wow. Sounds like that's a rough day today. Pause. And just see if you wanna keep going. If you don't wanna keep going, conversation over, we're done. We're outta here. But if it does want to, if you do need to get something out off your chest, give people the chance to do that.
Practice [00:28:00] that you start doing that with clients, you will have no problem growing your business. People want to be heard, and we never take the time to listen to people.
Jason: Cool. So that's step one. So I'm gonna just play Devil's advocate here and say but Scott, I can't get anybody to talk to me, so how do I get them to reach out so I can have a great empathetic meaningful conversation. What are some ways they can get prospects?
Scott: So if I was the sub 10 million advisor, this is what I did when I started my firm. The moment I left my current RIA, I was a part of NAFTA and a part of FPA, and I just started having coffees with all existing RIAs, especially the larger ones because I knew they had asset minimums that were a million dollars and they needed a place to send someone with a half a million dollars.
And I knew, and I just went in and I would have conversations where I listened.How did you get started? What did you enjoy about the business? What do you still enjoy about the business? What's shifted for you as you've grown the business over the years, knowing now what you know? Would you have done anything differently?
[00:29:00] Just an informational interview with a bunch of RIAs, like half of them sent me business.
Jason: Wow. By the way, I said the first time I've ever heard someone do that, and that sounds brilliant.
Scott: It's just get, go, have, offer to have coffee with people who are already in the business to learn from them. They'll learn from you because you're probably, using Altruist or you're using the newest technologies and they're not, they're slower sometimes the older generation and adoption of technology.
So you'll think I can't teach them anything, but I promise you that you will. And one of my closest friendships in the advisory business is at one of the largest firms in San Diego, and it all started on just reaching out for coffee.
Jason: Cool. All right, so I promise three things we've gotten, that's one super practical thing you can do.
Obviously listening is incredible. You're not gonna convert if you don't do that. Is there any other things you'd say like even if it's Hey, how did you get started with podcasting? We talked a lot about your YouTube channel. I Yeah. People, something are real intimidated with like content creation.
Yeah. There's a lot of people do it wrong. Some people start they quit. Like [00:30:00] any know, maybe just a tip that's been great for helping engage the audience and get reaction, whether it's referrals, prospects, things like that.
Scott: The other thing that I would say is just realize that storytelling will teach people more than teaching them technical knowledge. So if I can teach someone the benefit of, I don't know, life insurance through a brief story versus trying to explain to them how much exact life insurance they need and all the technicals behind it, far better for me to explain to you that you get abducted and as, or, abducted by aliens or you and your wife get taken out and the, you forget that it's the purge that night and you go out to dinner in the, in your family's home, happens every year like way better to use narrative that's funny or like pays like little cheeky and then be like, and because of that and briefly explain what human capital is, briefly explain that insurance is for.
The probability of something happening is really small, but the magnitude of something happening in your life is really big. So look, I'm just using my hands to keep it interactive. And then I say, and by the [00:31:00] way, Jason, you need X number of dollars of life insurance. We're gonna send you a link to do that.
Is that okay? That just made that conversation go. Yep, I'm good. And I think the final thing I would end with advisors, , and it gets back to that same idea of storytelling. We feel like when, especially when we're younger and we have a lot of technical knowledge, we feel the way to show that we're trustworthy is to tell everyone our technical knowledge.
So we almost vomit on people, all of the stuff that we know. But like I don't go to the doctor's office to have him tell me about all the details of the labs that he ran. I just want to know if there's something I need to be worried. And I think we have to remember that's the frame of reference we should be utilizing when we work with people is our job is to explain it at the highest level, the simplest way.
And then when you're done with that, just simply say, Jason, would you like to know more? And what you'll find is that 90% of people say no. And then your job's done. Your job's to know all the stuff and all the things that are happening in the background and your Excel spreadsheets and [00:32:00] all of that.
Their job, your job with them is just to make sure that they understand the path they're on and what their next steps are.
Jason: Totally. All right. We squeezed it out of Scott. We three absolute gems, so I love it. I know we have a few more probably questions. Yeah. We always like to. Keep it a little bit lighter, but great.
Dasarte: Yeah, let's get to it. My favorite part of the podcast, Rapid Fire Q&A. So we're gonna get inside of your brain and figure out what you've been up to and what you think about a few things. So the first question is, what's the most interesting thing that you've read this week?
Scott: Oh man. Yeah, so I'm reading the book Happy right now and it's a really good book. It's in a sense, an introduction, stoicism, which I have not. But it's a slow read, but a good one. Love it.
Jason: Nice. What has been the most helpful tool? I have this weird feeling like now you've been, you obviously wrapped in Elements, but like any other like tools that's been a super critical, helpful for you to be a better advisor.
Scott: I'd say there's two. So holistic plan is amazing. The way that it simplifies the complexity of taxes for the average advisor is a [00:33:00] game changer. And then I will, I'm super stoked about what you guys are doing at Altruist as well and how simple you're making it to open accounts for people.
I would say the biggest pain point that exists if you are a young advisor is sadly working with custodians and all of the custodians know who you are because you've been around forever. And the fact that I send a DocuSign that gets manually keyed in somewhere still. And that's what's causing the not in good orders to happen is just ridiculous.
That needs to be solved and thank you for solving that.
Jason: Oh yeah. It's I'd say a problem that's been around for 20 plus years, right? It's kinda overdue, right? Yes. But awesome to hear the great feedback and also I think give props to holistic plan.
Cuz I actually remember watching them at XYPNS live FinTech presentation, I don't know, four years. I feel like they're everywhere now. So they are, they're crushing it.
Dasarte: Yeah. They're amazing. Awesome. You've been saying a lot of things about planning and the word that sticks out to me is simple. make it simple. For your clients. And I have a, like a mantra that I say to myself whenever I try to look at the shiny object. I say that less is more and less does more. Yeah. So if you're [00:34:00] doing a couple things and you're doing it well, yes. That's gonna have a greater impact than you trying to do everything and you can do everything and get nowhere fast.
So as I'm listening to you talk, that's what I'm thinking. How it's hitting me. But last question for you, and then we'll close this thing up. What's a new hobby that you started recently?
Scott: Breathwork. The Whim Hoff Method. Okay. It's fascinating.
Jason: You're holding your breath for three minutes, right?
Scott: Yeah. So Whim Hoff, if you don't know what it is. So Whim was this guy that he lost his wife at a fairly young age. She, I think she passed away to suicide and he raised these kids and in his search for figuring out. He realized that he liked cold exposure. So he would do all this breath work and then he would go for, he grew, he's from, I think he's from the Netherlands, and he would go do these runs in the middle of the winter, or he'd go swim in the canal in the middle of the winter.
Right? And what he started to realize the physiology that's happening inside your body. When this is happening. He was studied by physicians in the Netherlands and then he had a group of people get studied after he taught them the same the same things. And what they're seeing that it does for your body and for your [00:35:00] physiology and for your state is just really cool.
So now, instead of in the afternoon, if I get down, and energy wise, I'll just do two rounds of breath work instead of having a coffee. It's awesome. And it works. It works. I'll be doing it tomorrow morning, 7:00 AM I'll be there leaving a meditation and a breathwork session.
Jason: I love it.
I wish I could be there. Actually I have to fly out today. I'm gonna miss the breathwork session, but just know that I can probably hold my breath for 37 seconds.
Yes. It's easy. Piece of cake. Yes. All right. Scott, thank you so much. This is obviously we're, at a conference, there's lots of other stuff going on, so the fact you took some time to hang out and and record with us some things that I think will make a big impact on advisors and kinda how they think about the future.
Just even practical steps if they're like figuring out how do I grow and get to that next level just means the world to us that you're willing to do that. So thank you for that. For everyone who's watching I'm always not as good as though, but I'm gonna get better Dasarte at closing this up.
But I will say that this is a movement that we're trying to create to help advisors, especially entrepreneurial advisors, that wanna make a huge impact in their communities. And so you can't do that unless there's engagement, right? So [00:36:00] best way to engage is feel free if you're watching this via YouTube clip Drop a comment, subscribe share.
If you're listening to this, to your podcast, make sure you subscribe and download right to your favorite podcasting platform. And then always shoot us notes too. We always share these clips, especially on social media, right? So just make sure that you help us get the word out there. I think that I said this yesterday on stage but that entrepreneurship is just so key to helping actually make financial advice more accessible. We can all create more classes and more optionality at the end of the day. We're going to feel most comfortable getting advice from someone we can relate to, and we're not going to have that until we have a lot more diversity of ownership of real practices.
So this is really key for that. So thank you for tuning in. Thanks Scott for being here. On behalf of my partner in wealth Dasarte Yarnway, we're out. Until next time.
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