Jeremy Walter, founder of Fident Financial, joins Jason and Dasarte for an inspiring conversation about his decision to stop growing his firm. In an environment that glorifies exponential growth stories, Jeremy chose to press pause in one area of his life to focus more intentionally on others. The episode is a must-listen for anyone trying to understand and recognize what it means to have enough. ABOUT ALTRUIST: We’re on a mission to make financial advice better, more affordable, and more accessible to everyone. Altruist is an all-in-one platform built exclusively to help RIAs start, run, and grow their practices. Our platform saves you time and reduces your costs: You can manage your entire book of business, get performance reporting, and bill your clients with ease and efficiency. Want to find out how Altruist can help you grow? See more at www.altruist.com/podcasts STAY CONNECTED: Instagram ► https://www.instpagram.com/altruistcorp/ Twitter ► https://twitter.com/altruist Linkedin ► https://www.linkedin.com/company/altruistcorp/
Jeremy Walter, founder of Fident Financial, joins Jason and Dasarte for an inspiring conversation about his decision to stop growing his firm. In an environment that glorifies exponential growth stories, Jeremy chose to press pause in one area of his life to focus more intentionally on others. The episode is a must-listen for anyone trying to understand and recognize what it means to have enough.
ABOUT ALTRUIST:
We’re on a mission to make financial advice better, more affordable, and more accessible to everyone. Altruist is an all-in-one platform built exclusively to help RIAs start, run, and grow their practices. Our platform saves you time and reduces your costs: You can manage your entire book of business, get performance reporting, and bill your clients with ease and efficiency.
Want to find out how Altruist can help you grow? See more at www.altruist.com/podcasts
STAY CONNECTED:
Instagram ► https://www.instpagram.com/altruistcorp/
Twitter ► https://twitter.com/altruist
Linkedin ► https://www.linkedin.com/company/altruistcorp/
DASARTE: What is enough for your business? Have you set your best benchmark? Are you listening to yourself when it comes to what you need and desire for yourself and your family? In this conversation with Jeremy Walter, Jason and I explore, Enough. What does it mean? What would make you satisfied? This is one of those conversations that if you don't listen to it all the way through, you're doing yourself a disservice. Jeremy comes on and he speaks about how he's grown his business, how he's grown it to a point that he can enjoy his family, his life, and still make time for himself. So turn up the volume. Stay the entire way through. You're going to enjoy it. Tune in.
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.
JASON: All right. Welcome to The Advisor Journey. I am Jason Wenk with my co-host and partner in wealth Dasarte Yarnway. And with Dasarte and I, we've got none other than Jeremy Walter of Fident Financial. Jeremy was one of these people who I actually admire a ton because he's done the thing I've always wanted to do. I've never had the courage to do it. We'll talk about that, I'm sure, in a bit, but Jeremy, welcome to The Advisor Journey. Welcome to the show. Thank you so much for joining us.
JEREMY: Hey, thanks so much. It is truly an honor. Been a huge fan of both of you two as individuals and as Altruist as a whole for a long time. So very, very honored to be here.
JASON: Awesome. Well, let's jump in, man. So this is going to be a unique episode. The Advisor Journey, although the name is a bit opaque, it doesn't necessarily say it's one thing always, and we're always about one thing, but I will say there's kind of an undertone of growth where it's like, hey, we're going to show you how to grow, grow, grow, scale up your firm. You did a lot of those things. You grew a firm, you scaled it up, but you did things a lot differently. So we're going to spend some time about kind of not just the growth journey, but also how you decided to grow a bit more intentionally with the core group of clients. Before we get to that, tell us a little bit about the backstory of the firm. When did you start? How did you get into the business in general? When did you make the leap to independence? You own your own RIA today. And then, yeah, like one of these big, big changes you decide to make in 2020. Tell us all about it.
JEREMY: So I went to school and I had two bachelor's degree, one in Bible and one in business administration. And especially the business administration, that's one of those degrees, it's like, a mile wide and an inch deep, like, you don't really have a whole lot of specialization into what you want to do. And it was, I mean, it's a kind of a crazy and much longer back story, but my dad actually introduced me to his financial advisor when I was a junior and kind of freaking out about having no idea what I wanted to do when I graduated. And so he made that introduction. That advisor was interviewing me, and I kind of turned the tables on him and was like, I have no idea what this profession is about. Could you just tell me a little bit about what it is a financial advisor does? And that led to some good conversations. Got an internship there, ended up being the first advisor that he hired when I graduated. And I spent the first ten years of my career at that firm with maybe the typical entrepreneur advisor journey of path to equity, eventual plan to take things over there. And phenomenal firm like, I mean, to this day I still remain in contact with the team there, but just a little bit of difference of how, to our content today, like, how big did we really want to grow to. A couple philosophical things, I mean, they were with and broker dealer and did a really good business. They did right by their clients, but I was really attracted to the RIA fee only space. And so at the end of 2016, turned in my resignation letter there, which was a whole two year long journey of internally battling myself with that. And then beginning of 2017, started up Fident Financial as a fee only RIA in Pennsylvania. And then got to 2020, and that's when I stopped taking on new clients.
DASARTE: I want to chime in. First of all, I want to say, Jeremy, huge fan,and I'll tell you why I'm a huge fan. I'm a huge fan because when I see what you're producing, it seems as though it's coming from a very authentic place. So for me that's the number one thing that earns my respect, is just people that are authentically being themselves in whatever arena they decide to step in. And I see that through your firm. And that's something that I truly, truly admire. So big shout out to you for being able to do that. I want to go to this concept of internal battles that you mentioned. Two year internal battle. Lots of times when people come in on the podcast, they're saying these buzzwords and I'm like, but what does that mean? Because I think somebody could be listening right now and could be going through an internal battle and needs to hear a story of what that might look like. So what led you to turning in that resignation letter and then starting Fident? And then we'll get into sort of your philosophy with Fident.
JEREMY: I appreciate those kind words. Authenticity is something that I do try to be intentional about. There's a lot of people out there, especially on social media, you can see them talk a certain way. And, you know, the actions might not always line up. I do try to be cognitive of that. So I appreciate that. I mean, that in the most literal sense possible. I'm a big journaler. It's the way I process, you know. There's this quote out there, that's debated who originated it, but, how do I know what I think until I read what I write? And that is always landed true with me. Just the act of writing has helped me clarify how I process things, how I think about things. And so, I said a two year battle, but it was actually longer than that. I can go back and read my journal entries of literally me selling myself on the idea of both sides of staying at the firm and then going out and launching my own. And it's almost comical to read the journal entries that flip flop almost week to week. I mean, this is such a phenomenal team. This is such a safe path that you have here. The previous owner has poured so much into you, has invested into you. There's so many reasons to stay. And then the next week it'll be like, yeah, but I come from a family of entrepreneurs, and I married into a family of entrepreneurs, and the idea of creating something myself is just so attractive and appealing. And so that, literally, I can go back and read these chronicles of journal entries, of just seeing this back and forth debate, that again, it's kind of comical. It was very painful in the moment of being like, I just have to make up my mind. But literally, I mean, it was a battle, of me trying to figure this out. And it's funny, actually, it was a reckless financial decision, to be completely honest. But one of the things that I did during this was we bought what I call our grown up house, as adults. And in my journal entries, I have written down, it was like, if we buy this home and we put this amount in from our savings, we assume this degree of mortgage, I can never leave the firm. I can't afford to reset my income. It was my way of chaining myself or roping myself to the masks, so to say, to avoid the siren songs. And it was literally 12 months almost to the day, it was a day or two difference, from when we closed on the home that we're in right now to when I turned in my resignation letter from that firm. So it was quite the journey. And honestly the tipping point, probably, was an executive coach who we had working with me and the owner of that firm. I was just very transparent with my employer, we had a really good relationship, and I said, hey, look, I'm thinking about going out and starting my own. I know that's probably not the smartest thing to tell you, because you might just fire me on the spot, but I want to be transparent with you. And he really appreciated that, and was like, hey, look, that's why I love that entrepreneurial part of you. That's why we have the plans in place that we do. But we started working with an executive coach kind of talking through this. And the coach told me, Jeremy, you are a great number two guy. I don't think you have what it takes to be your own firm owner. You're really good at the skill set that you have. I just don't think you have the skill set to start your own. And that was the push that was like, oh, okay. And that was actually the push that, really, I think nudged me to go do it.
DASARTE: I love that. I don't know if you play sports or not, but one of the things that I admire is stepping up and stepping into the challenge. Sometimes you need that push or you need somebody to say, well, you can't do it. And that really activates your faith and activates what was already inside of you. So I love that you were kind of challenged by talking to that executive coach. We just had an executive coach, Steve Sanduski, come on. We were talking about that before, and he spoke of similar things that you mentioned. I wanted to kind of get into your business. I think you have a secret sauce, and I have identified that and have watched that from afar. And authenticity seems to be a big part of that. Why don't you just talk about your philosophy with fighting and how that resonates with your clients.
JEREMY: I mean, and real quick, Steve is an amazing coach. He's an amazing individual. I have so much respect for him, that was a really awesome episode. If people haven't listened to that, like, I don't know when this will come out, but go back and listen to that episode. It was so good. I mean, the secret sauce it's, again, authenticity is one of these weird things where if you talk about being authentic, it's almost a red flag that you're not being authentic. And so I like to tread carefully with that idea. It's kind of someone saying like, oh, look how humble I am. Well, there's a degree of irony within that statement itself. But it's something that I did try and be intentional with. It's funny, on my website, and it's a pretty brief website, but one of the lines on when it's talking about me is, I prefer jeans and a shirt, I forget the exact language, instead of a three piece suit. So if clients are expecting a three piece suit, they might be disappointed. And I kind of threw that line in there as kind of an afterthought. And literally it's the one line that people bring up to me on a regular basis. Like, that's who we wanted to, not necessarily work with a guy who likes to work in jeans, but the person who's not pretending to be someone that he's not. And as I was in that growth stage of bringing clients on, I just tried to be as authentic as I could. Not trying to be someone that I'm not. And I think there's a virtuous cycle that happens with that. And that when the advisor is really who they are and they're comfortable in that person and invites the client to be comfortable in who they are, they don't feel they need to get dressed up from a financial standpoint or a physical dress standpoint, they can just be real. And I think that's what real financial advisors enable people to do is just be who they are. And it leads to, in my opinion, deeper conversations. What I call off the balance sheet conversations, of saying, hey, look we want to be rock stars of the technical part of what we do. The financial planning, the portfolio construction, the tax plan. We want to be really good at that. And we don't want that to be the only thing that we do. We want to kind of marry those on the balance sheet conversations, with off the balance sheet intentions and goals and values and so forth. And so, when you're able to just kind of let your guard down and be yourself, you invite clients to be comfortable in having some conversations that, quite honestly, they're probably not having with anyone else in their lives. And I think as that started to catch on, that led to other people talking to their friends and their family, and I was really blessed with the growth that we were able to see from that. And I think a lot of it just came down to, I was just really comfortable with who I was.
DASARTE: I love that. And I strongly believe that a financial planner, a financial advisor, our goal is to align a person's resources, whether that be their time, effort, talent, money with whatever their purpose or life's mission is. I think it's almost impossible to do that if you are not being authentic with your clients. There's no way. They're not going to have that conversation with you. There's no vulnerability there. You're going to go through the motion of creating the plans, probably talk about standard things like retirement, all the technical stuff that you mentioned, but when you are authentic without even saying anything, you're just being yourself, you're living your truth, that invites them to do the same. And I think that's where the real planning can occur. And it's taken years to learn that because I think everything in the industry is kind of creating a different sort of advisor. Like, three piece suit, have these conversations, do it this way. And I think you, Steve Sanduski, are really pulling advisors into the power of being themselves. So before we kind of go to the next part, I just want to speak to the advisor. Have you speak to the advisor. If they're trying to search for or be more of themselves in their practice, what are some things that you would recommend? I know that you journaled, but think about the old you. What are some things that you would say to that person in trying to step into this season of fighting or to their best self?
JEREMY: Actually, I don't have to talk to my old self from that because it's still something that I process and struggle and wrestle through on a regular basis. I don't think it's a one-time switch or a one-time conversation. I think you really have to get alone with your thoughts, which is just really uncomfortable for a lot of people. I think sometimes we distract ourselves with busyness and kind of more trivial tasks because we don't want to be alone with our thoughts because it can be a scary, scary place of fear. And we don't like to talk about fear or insecurities or so forth. But I think it's really necessary to, it sounds like Zen, but, really know who you are inside and not worry about what the outside influences are trying to coerce you to do or to be. And I think that's much more difficult to do than it is to actually say. Jason, you kind of said this at the beginning of the podcast, but we're in a growth oriented culture in our industry. Our default setting is growth. And I don't think there's anything wrong with growth. I just think you have to examine what is that default setting. Where is that toggle, so to say, which way is it pointed? And to get back to that individual as the advisor, I think you need that space to just spend some time really reflecting, hey, who do I want to be and what kind of firm do I want to build? Not what does this benchmark study tell me to do or what does this guru tell me to do, who do I really want to be? And that's step one. And then step two would be, and what do I have to do to really do that? And again, for me it's largely ignoring a lot of outside noise. This could just be a personal issue with me. But I remember in the beginning parts of Fident, I would obsess over benchmark studies of where firms were at based on their age. This firm started at this point, they grew to this many clients. They grew to this amount of revenue. They grew to this amount of assets under management. And I would obsess over that. I'd be like, where am I on that? And as an athlete, that competitive edge still exists inside of me. But I have to, like, case that and almost compartmentalize it. Compartmentalize it in saying, okay, from a business standpoint, I need to largely be okay with being an outlier from that, because that's not the game that I'm choosing to play. But as a competitor, I still kind of want to play that game at sometimes. So get alone with your thoughts, get really clear on who it is you want to be, what it is you want to build, and really try and ignore the background and the outside noise from it.
JASON: I was just listening, I forget sometimes I'm actually on this podcast with you guys because I'm just enjoying it so much. What's coming to my mind, by the way, is I'm like, man, you listen to Jeremy talk and you realize AI is not going to replace financial advisors. That's not happening. Because all the things you talk about, I love the off balance sheet stuff, that's not a trainable model. That's a very human kind of element and something that you seem to do extremely well. I want to get into the business. I think one of the really astounding things is that you made that choice to go independent. You had to take a big leap of faith. But I think even your background gives you a little bit of advantage in kind of like the comfort in taking that leap of faith. Getting to that in a minute, but you were able to grow so quickly that you were able to stop taking clients in 2020. I think that's this kind of big headline thing. When people hear it, it's like, wait, how did that happen? So I want to get into that growth there. But I can't help but think that there's elements of this, I'm not trying to plant the seed, so please correct me if I'm totally off here, but when I'm hearing about your background, what I've read about a little bit, you went to a Christian college, you have a degree in Bible in addition to business. You're a Certified Kingdom Advisor. You seem like someone who's very comfortable understanding that sometimes things are not actually in your control. Journal about them. You can only really control some things. And then many other things happen exactly as they're meant to happen. But I'm curious, take us through, like, is there any element of that in your business? I mean, it seems like it's part of that, being your authentic self. You don't have to talk about it, but I certainly pick up on an energy and a calmness that you have, which is incredibly appealing. And I can't help but think that comes from a little bit of who you really are. And I think what Dasarte just talked about, how it's important advisors find, like, if you don't know thyself, it's really hard to be authentic and I think a lot of people don't even really know who they are. And if they don't have that step, it's then hard to actually live in a way that's particularly intentional, but I'm curious if there's any truth to that in your case. And then, from there, maybe take us into that three year journey of growth that got you to a place to be able to say, hey, enough is enough, and I'm ready to just focus on these clients that I have.
JEREMY: Essentially, those two thoughts would be very much intertwined as well. I would come from a faith background and a specifically Christian worldview. Recognized that, hey, there are certain things as they're just outside of my control. And no matter how much I want to control them, I believe in a higher power that's orchestrating things there. And so there's honestly, again, to be transparent, this tension between a higher being or God sovereignty and, like, my responsibility that I still don't fully understand other than, like, if I feel caught or excited or led somewhere I'm gonna do it to my best ability and just recognize it might not work out and I'm okay because I did what I felt like I was supposed to do. So yes, that's a huge component. And like, contentment, I think, is a biblical concept that's not unique to Christianity, but it's an idea that's very much aligned with what enough looks like. Maybe inseparable, but it's something I think about a lot. What's enoughness? Which I don't think you can really define unless you're content with where you're at. But then where's the balance between contentment and complacency? You know, kind of like the negative side of it. There's a whole bunch of things that I don't have worked out yet. I still continue to process them, but being who I am and not really shying away from that, I think, led to the attraction of clients because I wasn't able to bring many clients with me when I left the old firm. I think it was like six or seven families that were able to come with me. So when I was crafting that marketing message, I just wanted to be very clear, hey, this is who I am and this is who I want to work with. And that's just largely to coincide with other faith oriented Christian families who want to kind of marry together this idea of our money, our capital, with off the balance sheet, other priorities in life. So it was kind of a natural fit. And getting back to what we talked about, me being authentic kind of attracted the types of clients that wanted to have those conversations, wanted to work with someone with a similar worldview. And I was really blessed with how I was able to grow to the place where I was able to kind of shut down the clients. And I knew, like, seventy-five households was about the capacity of what I personally could handle. I mean, Michael Kitces has done a bunch of research on how much can a solopreneur really handle themselves? I think his number was seventy-five to one hundred. So I erred on the safe side of that. And, I mean, I tell people, like, 2017 was really hard. 2018 was really hard. 2019 was really hard. 2017 was really hard because we reset our income. At that point we had three kids. My wife's a stay at home mom. My income was the only income coming into our house. And I talked about how we bought our grown up home as a way of keeping myself at that other firm. 2017 was so stressful because we just didn't have a lot of money coming in. And this is like, financial advisor heresy. But, I took money out of our retirement accounts. I took out a home equity line of credit against our home just to meet living expenses. Like, you can start up a financial advisory firm pretty lean. You don't have a whole lot of capital expense expenditures, but you have lifestyle needs. And with three kids at that time, four now, it was kind of expensive just to live life. So 2017 was so hard because we didn't have a lot of income coming in. 2018 was still so hard because we were pulling out money that, realistically, from the firm. It was like month to month of, hey, do we have enough to pull out of the business to cover our personal expenses? 2019 was still really hard because we, I kind of phrase it, like, we had to restock the pantry of what we raided in the previous two years. So we still felt really tight. And the beginning of 2020, even in the midst of Covid craziness, that was the first time when we really said we can take a breath from a financial standpoint. So I think when you hear advisor stories, there's a lot of survivorship bias about it and being like, oh, go do your own thing. It's so easy. And you usually only hear the people who made it on the other side. I did make it on the other side. And I just tried never to, like, I tried to be very transparent. Yeah, I made it, but those years were really hard. Really hard. But we're financial advisors, we can project things out to a certain degree. And I just looked at the client base that I had, I deal mostly with accumulators in their life stage. I said, okay, if I'm working with these seventy-five families, I know that as long as I do a good job taking care of them, we're going to have enough as a family. And was able to kind of plant the flag in the ground and say, we're done. Which, ironically enough, is the most effective marketing strategy you can do. Once you say that publicly, everyone's then bound to be like, hey, I know you're not taking any new clients, but. And so if you say that and really mean it just be prepared for a monstrous inflow of inquiries.
DASARTE: First of all, kudos to you. This level of transparency is something that I always aspire to have on the podcast. Because, I mean, to be an overnight success takes time. Whether that's three years in your case or whether that's ten, twenty. It takes time. And I think people discount time when they're trying to chase their their dreams. I just want to hear about that leap of faith, you know what I mean? Because I don't think there's a lot of advisors, specifically, being analytical, being technical. That would do what you've done, especially with three kids. Now four. Can you speak to that at all?
JEREMY: Yeah. I mean, the kids are the main driver with that. Right now as we're recording, our kids are 14, 11, 9 and 5. And I read a phenomenal book on this, called The Family Board Meeting, that talks about, like, we have eighteen summers with each one of our kids. Which is crazy and like, again, journaler, like, I worked out eighteen boxes and then I color in the boxes of how far we are. So, like, our oldest, I'm like, oh my word. The vast majority of the time that, we have primary influence over her, the vast majority of time when she views us as people she actually wants to hang out with and spend time with, that window is closing. And for our other kids, that time is just marching forward. And I said, man, if I can be in a spot where I can have excess time and excess energy to plow back into them, I want to do that. I can always go earn more money. I can always grow my firm down the road but I can't always have this time, have these summers with my kids. And I think financial advisors were one of a very small handful of professions where we can actually choose that. We can choose not to grow and not really sacrifice regular income along the way. Again, if we're in a recurring fee based revenue, we can just take good care of our clients, continue to get paid on that, and we don't have to go chase new business all the time. And I was dumbfounded. I thought maybe new business development was taking up like 25 to 30% of my time. When I actually stopped doing it, it's like, wow, that was closer to 50, 55% of my time spent in that business development stage and onboarding and everything that goes with that. But it was a very intentional decision. I was saying, man, I want to maximize the window with my kids, and I don't do it perfectly. There's plenty of times where I just waste time or I get distracted in something else. I don't want to pretend to be the perfect father figure or anything, but I just really want to put systems and structures in my life that allow me to be there in ways that otherwise maybe I couldn't be.
DASARTE: I love it, I love it. Jason and I were on another podcast right before this, and we were talking about Founder-Market Fit, about how you find your interests and your passion. You mix that with your skills and if it makes some money, you're in the right spot. And it seems as though you've created that with your practice. The exact amount of clients that you need to serve to support your client, to support your family. But the main thing there, which goes back to our first point, is what's important to you? And it seems like the pin in this whole thing is your family, your kids spending time with that. So I challenge advisors who are listening to this podcast to figure out what's important to me. And I think you kind of back into the type of business you need to create by just answering that simple question. And I can see that you've spent that alone time and you've asked yourself those questions to get to this point, to say seventy-five is enough. Let's get to it. What are three things that advisors who are thinking or are on the borderline, like, hey, I love what I do, I love the clients, I love the relationships, and I might want to stop here. What are three things that they should be doing if they're trying to make this decision?
JEREMY: The first thing that comes to mind is be super grateful that you're thinking about this on this side of enough. Because I've talked with, I don't even want to try and put a number on it, a lot of advisors who are beyond that enough figure. They've got staff, they have clients above that amount. And if you're beyond that amount and you want to kind of scale back or quote unquote, right size the size of your firm, those are really painful conversations and painful decisions. So if you're able to be thinking about this before you get there, just be grateful that you're thinking about it instead of being on the other side of it. The second thing that comes to mind is kind of throttle down. If you're running at 80, 90 miles an hour right now, in this growth mode, and you suddenly slam on the brakes and go down to ten miles an hour, it's a bit of a jarring experience. I wish I would have done this a little bit better. Just, as I was getting up to that point of, stop taking on new clients, like, creating a wait list, just pushing things out a little bit more, so it wasn't such a jarring transition. So I would encourage you to just throttle down a little bit as you're getting up to that point. And as you're throttling down, be super hyper selective with who you're taking on as clients, because, again, just use my number, like, if you're working with 75 households, 75 families, that's 75 seats on the bus, so to say. And there's going to be less people lined up on the street to kind of get on the bus when you stop taking on clients. So if you need someone to exit the bus, there might not be a line waiting out the door right away. So you want to be really selective on who you're working with. Make sure you just enjoy them as individuals. It's not someone you dread when you see their email come in or see them pop up on your calendar, be really selective with it, with who you're working with.
DASARTE: I love it.
JASON: Before we go into rapid fire, I just wanted to just ask a question. I'm sure this will be on the mind of some people. You mentioned earlier that your clients are mostly in their accumulation phase. It lends itself to your business should grow even with you not taking new clients. I mean, capital markets combined with people still accumulating, plus they may inherit money, it's not inconceivable that your business should sort of double. At least your clients wealth should double, perhaps every five years, every six years or something to that effect. Is your revenue model tied to that? I mean, are you kind of combination of planning and assets or do you do fixed fees? I'm just curious if there's a component that helps make this easier for those, because obviously if someone was like, only flat fees and they never charged their clients more, eventually that wouldn't work so well. But what have you done to make sure you can ensure that this works long term as an economic model?
JEREMY: That's a really good question. And that's kind of a, not an unfair, but a somewhat unspoken part of my decision was I'm primarily assets under management billings. AUM billing from that. When I say majority I'm talking, like, 95% of the firm's revenue is coming from AUM. There's a small component still that's, how I set up initially was, client comes on board, I'm going to have a minimum household fee to charge them for the year together. And then depending how much money I'm managing from that, I'm going to take an AUM fee from it. And if it's beneath what the minimum fee is, I bill them directly. So, I use advice pay to handle that. And then once a year I'll ratchet down, usually, the advice pay component compared to how much I'm taking out of the assets under management component. And then as people are saving, as the capital markets do their thing, that secondary fee is probably going to go away for all my clients from it. At some point I'll be exclusively AUM.
JASON: That’s helpful. And by the way, that's not to open up the can of worms debate over which is the most righteous model. I think that if you do great work for people, usually the result is that you have a very full client list of very happy people, and it sounds like you've done that. So whatever you're doing is working, and no doubt the clients are really excited to have an advisor like you. I know I would be, to have an advisor like you. So it means a ton. It would be remiss if we didn't talk about, because you're one of the first people I saw really promote it and talk about it a lot, the one page financial plan. You even created a template around it. I know that you're not the genesis necessarily of the idea, but you're certainly one of the first people to really talk about it, promote it, sounds like you're using it with clients. Can you tell us a little bit about the one page financial plan journey?
JEREMY: Credit where credit is due on this, Carl Richards is the one who literally, physically wrote the book, The One-Page Financial Plan. I just created a template off of it because I really appreciated the simplicity of it. I came from a firm where we would churn out very large financial plans and leatherbound binders that would take a lot of man hours to actually assemble. And the nature of financial planning is that things change. I kind of joke with clients the minute I give them a financial plan, the moment I walk out of this room, our financial plan is going to be updated. That's the dynamic of life in a financial planning. So there's a lot of intense data that goes to what's on the one page financial plan. But it kind of communicates this idea of planning is a dynamic, ongoing process that never really stops. What we do is not create financial plans, period. We're financial planners who continue the act of financial planning and taking in new information and life changes with clients. I think the one page plan just kind of captures the fluidness of that. God, Carl Richards wrote the book on it. I just created a template from it. I started sharing what I was doing. A lot of advisors seem interested in it. I spun it into a product that turned into a course that I could record with Carl, and it's been so fun to kind of see it and see the industry really take it and run with it. I mean, a lot of the planning software actually have one page plans, they don't call them that, but simplified versions of that inside the software. So it's really cool to see that.
JASON: Yeah. Now, I think actually, almost every modern financial planning software has adopted some version of, I'll call it a one page, but then they add a couple pages of disclaimers to theirs, but they're trying to get the main data on one page and that's almost like a required feature of modern financial planning software. I think we can jump into our rapid fire Q&A. So we've got three questions for you. I'll fire off the first one, I'll let Dasarte grab the second, and I'll finish up with the third. Since you're a man who writes a lot, I suspect you're also a man who reads a lot. So what's the most interesting thing you've read this week?
JEREMY: Probably, and I'm going to cheat a little bit, it wasn't something I read, it was something I listened to. On the Kitces & Carl Podcast, they talked about what are goals, effectively. And setting goals. And this is something I've thought a lot about. And I've actually kind of morphed a little bit from being someone who, leaning down to my bookshelf right now, like, literally, I started three inch binders that I called my annual game plan. And it mapped everything out. Like, here's exactly what I want to do every single week of the year. And I think they were helpful for a season. But it was so outcome specific. And over time, I've thought more about shifting from focusing on goals to focusing on habits. Now, those habits might be in place to achieve a certain goal, but I felt Kitces & Carl had a really interesting conversation about this. And kind of my take away from it was kind of this almost meta idea of sometimes a goal can just be to consistently do a habit. And that's something that I feel I've been reading a lot of different people talking about, the power of habits. Probably most prominently, James Clear, Atomic Habits. At this point, I don't really set annual goals per se. I set habits that will hopefully achieve certain things. And specifically who I want to be just by doing those things. But anyway, Kitces & Carl had a really interesting conversation about what goals are and how habits tie into it and so forth.
DASARTE: Love it. One quote that I like says, if you are such person, why worry about such thing? And essentially it's, like, focus on being the type of person that can achieve said goal. And I think that's the part that advisors have to kind of flip on their head. People in general have to flip on their head. If you want to scale your business to a certain point, if you want to do X thing, focus on making yourself the type of person that can receive that. Whether that means loving your business, your spouse, your kids in the way, or doing the daily tasks that will bear the fruit of a certain AUM size. Whatever the case is it's more important to focus on that thing. One of my favorite, favorite quotes, if you are such person, why worry about such thing? I'll ask you the second question. What is one thing that you wish you can do differently in your career?
JEREMY: That's tricky to answer because, I'll give you an answer, but I'm a firm believer that you learn from your mistakes and there's certain things that I wouldn't know if I didn't screw up along the way from it. And so I certainly don't live a life of no regrets. I don't think that's possible. But I also recognize some of those regrets taught me really valuable lessons. But something I wish I would have done earlier on, not even just in my career, but in my life, was just question what the default settings are in whatever context it is. At the firm you're at, the way that your family does things, the things that your friends do, just question what is the default setting there. Which way is this switch toggled? And it's not to say everything needs to be changed and you have to uproot everything. There very well could be a good reason why things are done a certain way, but I think it's valuable to ask what those things are and why they're done. One, you might be able to learn something from that, but two, it might be worth something changing. So it's kind of a, I don't want to call it a life philosophy, but it's something I try to think about regularly. Just question the default settings in life. I wish I would have done that earlier on in my career.
JASON: I had a business coach years ago. He also happened to be a psychologist, but he had this saying try to remove all limiting beliefs. Default settings, sound like limiting beliefs to me. Where it's like, well, I just do this this way because that's just the way that it's done. He would sort of say, let's just try to forget those default settings, I guess is probably the way we're putting it, and then, what should your settings actually be? It's probably a good way to think about it, but well done. I think we've heard that from you a few times. That's going to become a theme here. Live life like Jeremy Walter. Challenge those default settings. All right, last question. What is a new hobby that you've started recently? And you've got all this free time now. I'm just teasing, four kids and a successful business, not tons of free time, but with the free time you have any new hobbies?
JEREMY: I turned 40 this past year, and, this is probably not a new answer for people on the show, but I've just somewhat recently got more into functional fitness. Like, turning 40, I recognized I can't really do the things that I used to be able to do, especially athletically wise, without it hurting. And so, it hasn't been super, maybe the past six months or so, I've just been really super intrigued and experimenting with different stuff of just functional fitness. I'd say, okay, look, I'm losing that window of time when I can really add muscle or to get to where it's not depleting very quickly. And so just messing around with the home gym looking at different exercises. Most of our kids are involved in sports, looking at the agility programs they're doing. Partaking in that. The body is such a fascinating thing. And honestly, I never really was super intentional with how I treated my body. And so I've just really enjoyed getting to understand this, what I'm calling functional fitness as a catch all, of taking care of this body. I want to be able to play with my grandkids. I want to be able to go play a game of pick up football and not feel like I'm dying for three days afterwards. I want to stay active. And that's been really fun.
JASON: Well, I would say, I'm also in my 40s, a little bit older than you. Dasarte is still this young, athletic guy, you know, world class athlete. I'm sure you probably are feeling some more pains than the average person given your playing career, but, I say the thing that never made me feel more like my age was when my wife and I had our most recent baby, who's two years old. And chasing around a two year old, when you're in your early 40s, all of a sudden you're like, oh man, I never knew I had a muscle on that particular spot in my back that hurts when I throw him on my hip. Anyway, I'm sure you can somewhat relate with a five year old, I guess, at 40.
JEREMY: Oh, totally.
JASON: Well, I'll take us home. And I very much appreciate, this has been super refreshing and fun. And, I mean, I just can't thank you enough for making some time. I think it's an incredible message that more advisors need to hear. And I've used this quote a billion times, probably. Or maybe not quite that much, but on this podcast, Dasarte probably hates hearing it. But my favorite ever blog post was a one sentence blog post by Seth Godin, and this was simply, it's okay to stop when you're happy. And man, I just don't know that I've ever met another advisor that's actually done that quite the way that you have. And I realized maybe it wasn't all around happiness, there's a lot of other intentions, I think, that went along with your decision, but couldn't be happier for you that you kind of built a great business. Couldn't be happier for your clients, couldn't be happier for your family. Everybody kind of wins. And you're real kind of shining light in the industry, man. So thank you so much for being on and sharing. For everyone who's listening, this has been The Advisor Journey with Dasarte Yarnway, myself, Jeremy Walter. You can check out this podcast and others go to altruist.com/podcast. Make sure you like, subscribe, share. You know, I always say when I get the chance to do these closings that I started Altruist many years ago now. Five plus. It feels like ten years. In start-up years they call that thirty five, like dog years. But, I started it because we want to make advice better, more affordable, accessible to everybody. And one of the ways we do that is by kind of sharing the stories of independent advisors journeys, so that you can learn a thing or two about how you can help more people, whether it be in your community or virtually around the country. Hopefully this has been one of those episodes. And if you want to help us with that mission, you can just share these podcasts. A great way to get the word out, get more advisors access to the stories of those who've built some really special things before them. So again, like, comment, subscribe, share, and check out this and other episodes at altruist.com/podcast. Thank you so much. On behalf of my friend, Dasarte Yarnway and our friend Jeremy Walter, everybody have a great day. Thanks for joining us.
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