Scaling Your Business With Technology

Intro:

Welcome to the Financial Planner's Desk podcast, a podcast designed for you, the financial professional. We'll keep you up to date on industry trends in technology and marketing, and we'll always keep you in the loop on new regulations. Here's your host, independent advisor at OSJ, Richard Oring.

Erik:

This is actually not Rich. This is Erik Garcia, I'm not an OSJ but I am a financial advisor. Welcome back to the Financial Planner's Desk. And this is Rich, Rich, what's happening?

Richard:

What's up, Erik? I'm glad you noticed that, we have to update that intro.

Erik:

Yes, you do man. Yes, you do. Let's have a conversation real quick before we hop in today's topic. So on the last episode, if y'all listened to it-

Richard:

Wait, you listened to it already Erik?

Erik:

Yes, I listened to it. Of course, I listened to it.

Richard:

Crap.

Erik:

But I wasn't on it.

Richard:

[crosstalk 00:00:47] I think I know where this is going.

Erik:

I was not there. In the first two minutes dude, you called me out, that's cold.

Richard:

Well, I mean, everyone knows financial advisors take the day off and play golf Erik, that's common, it's like doctors.

Erik:

Yes.

Richard:

I don't.

Erik:

Doctors take time off to go play golf. I don't know that.

Richard:

I think so. I mean, doctors, lawyers.

Erik:

For the record, that golf game was scheduled way earlier than you scheduling that podcast, so that's why I wasn't there. That was my second episode as co-host dude, that's cold.

Richard:

So Erik, I guess this episode we'll talk about honesty, integrity, and ... So what was your score?

Erik:

It was terrible. It was actually a client, it was a new client playing with his CPA and his banker, so it was more of a networking event and we were all pretty terrible.

Richard:

So we'll call that business then. So Erik, why don't you tell us about this episode?

Erik:

Yes. Well it's not just this episode but a series of episodes is our tech stack. As financial advisors, technology is a big part of what we do and a lot of our conversations revolve around technology. So what we want to do is just talk about our journey in technology, different technologies that we use, why we use technology, how to pick the right tech stack.

Richard:

Erik, it's funny that we chose this topic to talk about because I'm sure in a future podcast we're going to talk about time management and how not get bogged down on things which aren't necessary for your business. So, when we started working together, you and I had the same negative personality trait on one issue in business, we love-

Erik:

Negative personality.

Richard:

We loved playing with technology, and we would go so gung ho and try different things, we would subscribe to it, but we would never figure out how to implement it to actually use it for business and make it work. So we just kept on spinning our wheels and spinning them, and we'd find the newest, nicest gadget, and it can be the best out there, but if we didn't use it, it was useless. And then I think one day you said to me, "Damn Rich, we waste so much time doing this. We got to figure out how to stop." So my-

Erik:

It's the antithesis. It's the antithesis of what technology is supposed to do. Technology is supposed to help you be more efficient, it's supposed to help you scale your practice, and yet, you and I were ... No, I'm just enamored by technology and in all of the tools that they come up with, and how they come up with them, and how they can implement them, not just in our practice, but in business in general. And it's the distraction of squirrel, right, we get distracted from the main thing that we're supposed to be doing. And, yes, I think we-

Richard:

I think we keep looking for the magic software program to free up all our time, do the job for us, and we just show up, hit the print button and talk to clients.

Erik:

Yes.

Richard:

And I think we're realizing it's not going to happen.

Erik:

It's not.

Richard:

It's getting close, but it's not going to happen.

Erik:

It's not. So, yes, hopefully, so what we can do here in the next, I don't know, 25 minutes of us talking is just lay the groundwork for picking a tech stack. Laying the groundwork of what's the right technology for you, answering questions, how do you select technology. And we get it that a lot of our listeners are probably limited in what they can choose, it could be from software that's approved by their broker dealer or things that they can or can't use, so we get that. So in this episode, we're not going to necessarily talk about any specific technology, but more broadly, what areas of our practice do we need to be looking to implement some technology to help us in our practice?

Richard:

So Erik, I guess we can break this down to a few categories for today and we can talk about the importance of CRM programs, financial planning program, research, ways to gather on client data, and I guess what the new thing, virtual meetings like Zoom, Microsoft Teams and things like that. But I think when we look at technology, I know for you and I, there's one category, you can't really describe it, but how do you bring all this technology together so there's not redundancy?

Richard:

So I know that you and I are very big into creating API integrations with our programs, before we look at any programs, I think we look at integration list first because we only want to enter data once and have multiple places for the output. So I think that's really important when we talk about these topics.

Erik:

Well that's the dream. The dream is no duplicate entry, all my technology talks to itself, I can communicate across staff members, I can communicate across back office very simply and very cleanly, and unfortunately, it doesn't always work. So let me just open by saying this, the right technology, the best technology is the technology that you're going to use. It doesn't have to be the most sophisticated, it's the one that you're actually going to implement.

Erik:

And it's something that I've learned Rich in my journey here, my tech journey that you described of us chasing everything new out there, is don't pick a technology and try to find a problem for it to solve. Figure out the problem in your practice that you're trying to solve. What is the bottleneck? What's the issue that you're having in your practice? Stop, identify that, and then go find the technology that's going to help you solve that problem.

Richard:

[inaudible 00:06:30] I guess to add on that, not one product might be 100% perfect for your solution, it just has to work and allow you to free up time, not miss things. We talk about workflows all the time, and I know we're going to talk about CRM, there's limitations to every single program which does workflows, some are stronger on some things and weaker on the others, so you're not going to get a perfect solution all the time.

Erik:

I mean, you named a very, very, very short list of, I would say, places in our practice that we need to use technology. But if you go check out, I don't know if you ever see Michael Kitces, his financial advisor tech solutions map, which, [crosstalk 00:07:16] oh my gosh, I mean, stuff like I'm looking at right now, technology for risk tolerance, client survey feedback, advisory fee billing, performance reporting, cybersecurity, behavior assessments, specialized planning, financial planning, fee payments, portfolio management, investment data and analytics, stress testing, digital marketing, lead Gen, CRM, forms management, social media archive, it goes on, and on, and on.

Erik:

Now a lot of these tech solutions are probably going to be provided by, again, maybe your broker dealer or your your RIA, but that's all the places where technology plays a role. So as we jump into this, something that for me when I'm using technology that I'm looking, I'm looking for the question is, what is the purpose of technology? And really it comes down to two things for me.

Erik:

One is, I want to scale my business and improve my processes. Now they're closely tied, I want to scale my business as a financial advisors, we go to conferences and everything is about scale your business, the way you do that is through technology and improve your processes. So when I talk about improving processes, I'm thinking of really breaking that down into two types of processes, if you will, two areas.

Erik:

Number one would be increasing efficiency in back office processes. And then the second would be becoming more accessible, the processes that are more client facing where technology can help me on the client facing side. So let's start with maybe the back office stuff.

Richard:

CRM.

Erik:

Yes, back office.

Richard:

Yes, let's start. For those who don't know what CRM stands for, Contact Relationship Management Program. In our industry the big ones is the Wealthbox, the-

Erik:

Redtail, Salesforce.

Richard:

Redtail, that's what I was thinking, Salesforce, I mean, there's a whole bunch of them. Some of the planning softwares have been built in.

Erik:

Hey, how many CRMs have you used in your history?

Richard:

So I'll give you a little background. So I started off with GoldMine believe it or not. So our accounting firm back in the day, accounting software sometimes was very complicated, not QuickBooks, I'm talking about AccuTax or something, I'm trying to remember what it's called, but big inventory counting software programs. So sometimes accounting firms would have an IT company attached to it. Well one of the partners actually owned a IT company for accountants, and they would roll out this software program, but they were also certified GoldMine programmers. So we started off with GoldMine, and then from GoldMine I went to the Bill Good Marketing system which, I got to tell you, was one of the best programs out there which I really liked for automation. Then we eventually switched to-

Erik:

No, Bill Good, was that a CRM or is it more marketing, or is it all altogether?

Richard:

It was all in one.

Erik:

[crosstalk 00:10:19] So you could manage all your client data in there?

Richard:

Everything. I mean, and it was designed to free up time for the advisor, so you would enter stuff in and you had a dedicated person who had to work the program for you. And the biggest thing is, everything can be the best thing, if your employees don't accept it and use it, it's useless.

Erik:

Best technology is the one that you use.

Richard:

That's right. So a good roll out to your staff and showing them why we're doing it, and getting them engaged and wanting to do it is really important. So at some point I merged my practice with another practice, and we needed something more robust, compliance was going in a different direction, it was getting a lot more stricter, so I wanted to be able to customize a lot of stuff. So I went to Salesforce. I went from a CRM costing a couple $1,000 a year to a $22,000 bill. I always said, if you can dream it, it'll do it. So whatever you needed, you can customize to get it done.

Erik:

Now let's pause on Salesforce for a second because I learned this a few years ago but Salesforce is basically just the chassis that a lot of other CRM is built on. So you can have Salesforce, but you might not have the same version, or the same build out, the same specs, if you will, that someone else might have at Salesforce.

Richard:

So then my broker dealer asked me to be on a committee because they were rolling out Salesforce for the whole company. So I figured I'd switched to that. But what I learned quick was, if you have a CRM designed for 1000s of advisors, it's never going to be what you want for your particular business. So I got really frustrated with that. Now I was like, I don't want to pay 22,000 again, so I went back to Redtail. And one of my friends showed me Wealthbox, and what I liked about Wealthbox is that you don't have to pull up the contact to type your notes in, so it's very quick to enter things like tasks and so forth, and what they were rolling out with the workflows was really nice. It's a lot more money than Redtail, but it allows us to do more.

Richard:

And I got to tell you, I always look at how technology is changing and I'm like, oh my God, I wish I would go get rid of Wealthbox and go to Microsoft Dynamics CRM, because I'm really a big Office 365 user. But when I went to wealth box my staff came to me and said, "This is it. We're not switching again. We're going to stick to one and we're taking that power away from you." So I would be really, really nervous if I ever made the switch to another CRM.

Richard:

But Erik, the CRM, for me, is the core of my support for my tech because everything goes first in my CRM, and a lot of that data goes out to other programs, and I think that's really important. If you put garbage in, you get garbage out. So you have to make sure you keep your CRMs clean, organized, and then you have to think about it, when I'm using my CRM, what can I do with it? I know you and I, we run our marketing, we create tags, tags goes into our marketing programs automatic, every night they update. So we don't have to remember, I just added a new client, I got to go put them in my distribution list for emails, or my newsletter and things like that, or a referral program I want to run, it's going to do it automatically for you, and I think that's big.

Richard:

I know I've taken this away from myself because you're the guru in workflows. If you want to talk about workflows and I know we have a few more bullet points on that, you want to cover those too?

Erik:

Yes. Let's clarify something, I've made just a lot of mistakes in workflows to learn what doesn't work, and what works.

Richard:

[crosstalk 00:14:06] I don't care how you became a guru.

Erik:

And again, it goes back to using the technology. The technology that works is the technology that you're going to use. And sometimes we use it differently than the way it might have been intended, but it solves a problem that we're trying to solve at that particular time. And workflows are huge. We talk about technology, and we talk about, a part of technology is automation. So we do a lot of the same things over and over again. So if we can find a way to automate those tasks, and it could be something as simple as, man, every time I open up a new account, these six things need to happen, and I really don't want to have to create six tasks every time I open up an account, that's where the workflows are really good to automate that stuff.

Erik:

You can apply a workflow to a particular process and all of a sudden, all those tasks are created and they're assigned to the right people to get them done when they're supposed to get them done along the way. But I know for me one of the, and you have this under CRM and it's related to CRM because the CRM is the heart and soul of your business, but probably outside of the CRM, maybe the piece of technology that changed my use of my time the most, and this is going to sound interesting or like, no way, but it's a scheduling app.

Erik:

About four or five years ago-

Richard:

I think that's getting really popular now. We're hearing more and more about it, and you've been using it for years.

Erik:

I've been using it for four or five years now. And if you think about the amount of time that we spend, hey, what's a good time for you? No, that doesn't ... Let me email you time. And you keep going back and forth, then you schedule something, then you have to reschedule it. Now, I will rarely schedule a call with a client. Sometimes I do it just we might be talking, we might do it that way. But most the time, if they're like, hey, Erik, we need to meet, I'll send them a link to my calendar, and what's amazing about scheduling apps, is clients schedule themselves and they don't miss appointments when they schedule it themselves. When they physically and manually-

Richard:

Now, Erik.

Erik:

Go ahead.

Richard:

So Erik, so I have my scheduler on the website, how many times have you came in the morning and you're already thinking yourself, it's really nice outside, I'm going to head home, maybe go have a catch with my kids around four o'clock. And then it's 10 o'clock in the morning you're like, [crosstalk 00:16:24] what's this on my calendar?

Erik:

What's a catch? You have a catch? Do you throw the ball?

Richard:

Baseball catch man.

Erik:

That must be a northeast thing.

Richard:

You don't play [crosstalk 00:16:32] sports with your kids?

Erik:

We do but we don't, I'm going to go have a catch. We throw the football or the baseball, we don't have catches. Well, the beautiful thing about scheduling apps is you can block time. And depending on the scheduling app that you have, you can create different appointment types. So for example, if I only want to see new clients on Wednesdays between one and five, I can make that for that appointment type the only time that's available on my calendar.

Richard:

Yes, I don't allow clients to schedule anything past three o'clock on a Friday.

Erik:

Yes. So you can see you can block your calendar. So you have a lot of customization but that scheduling app is so important. I'm going to tell you right now, financial advisors, if you're not using a scheduling app, that is probably one of the least expensive, life changing pieces of technology that you can implement into your practice. And the beautiful thing is, you talked about this earlier, is with all these different technologies and you can have the best of the best, but if they don't talk to each other, then you're probably creating more inefficiencies than you are efficiencies. When you can get your scheduling app integrated with your CRM, it's magical, it's absolutely magical.

Richard:

Confirmation emails, everything, you can send text confirmations.

Erik:

Yes.

Richard:

Yes. I know on the discovering programs some people don't have auto accept, the client can request a meeting and then you have to confirm it, so it's not like they can just go and bombard you scheduling a few meetings out and so forth. You can set it up if people are taking advantage of it for approval on those requests.

Erik:

I've never had a problem with people booking me more often than-

Richard:

I want my clients to call me. The more you talk to them, the stronger the relationship, and more important, more you understand what their expectations are and what they're looking for.

Erik:

Yes.

Richard:

So Erik, I know you introduced me to this a couple of years ago and I don't think I have any really I'm using right now, Zapier, I mean, I guess I also use other automation through the Microsoft, it used to be called flow now it's called power or something. But you want to talk about how you utilize Zapier and what it is? Because it's funny, I have a friend who is an IT programmer, he manages a team and a couple weeks ago we were talking and I mentioned Zapier on something and he's like, "What is that?" So I just assumed everyone in the world would have known what Zapier is by now.

Erik:

Yes, Zapier is pretty cool. So for tech solutions that don't have direct integration. So a lot of the integrations that we're using right now, if you're on Redtail or Wealthbox, you have a lot of direct integrations with your planning software, regardless of what you're planning software is more than likely there's a direct exchange of information. However, sometimes technology that we use, there's not a direct flow of information and Zapier is like, I call it the R2-D2 of tech.

Erik:

So what it'll do is it'll take two pieces of technology and transfer information from one to the other. You can map the fields. So if you go look up Zapier Nation, they actually have a bunch of samples apps and recommendations if you put the software that you use. So we used to use it a lot with task management, where we used Desana or Trello, and if a task was created, we can push it to a spreadsheet which is a lot easier for one of our staff manage.

Erik:

So, nowadays you're starting to see more and more of the tech companies have direct integrations, they're cleaner, they're more reliable, and their IT departments are pouring money into it making sure that they are clean and reliable, but Zapier is a good solution. I would say probably not as much anymore for some of the more sensitive data, in fact, I never really did use it for sensitive data. I used to use Zapier to get my calendar events to my CRM, but I don't have to do that now because my CRM now has a direct integration with my calendar, which is nice.

Richard:

I know one of the things when I was originally using a MailChimp or ActiveCampaign was when I added a new client into my CRM program, it automatically with a Zapier zap, would put them into my MailChimp contacts, and then the distribution lists for that.

Erik:

Yes. I mean, when I was able to create a couple 100 client folders automatically using Zapier, you can go in and say, hey, look, here's a spreadsheet, take column A and column B and then create all these folders, automatically create them, and it just saves a lot of time, again, using the power and leveraging technology.

Richard:

So I'm just going to close off CRM category by saying one thing, as an OSJ working with other advisors on business development and so forth, when I talk to them about CRMs, a lot of the advisors don't know what a CRM is capable of doing. They think it's like you put your client's name, your contacts, and your notes in, and work with your calendar, integrate with Outlook calendar, whatever. They don't know a lot of the other features which you can do in a CRM. So if you're only utilizing your CRM as a glamorized Rolodex, take time, go to their website and see what else it can do. If you're not using one of the CRMs for our industry, not telling you to switch but I would go look because you might be making your staff work harder than they really need to.

Erik:

Yes. And I would say, you use most of the tech solutions in our industry are regularly putting out some type of webinar or some type of training, I would attend those especially when you're learning a new piece of technology because there might be something that it does that you just don't know, and once you see it, you're like, oh my gosh. You're like-

Richard:

Yes, I like when they come out with videos on new integration partners.

Erik:

Yes. We have problems in this business that we don't know that are problems because we just deal with them, because that's just the way it's supposed, that's just what we do, that's what we've been doing, and we don't recognize that it might not be a problem, but it's certainly not efficient. And when we start to learn what our tools can do for us, we realize that, oh my god, that is a problem.

Richard:

So I want to talk about financial planning software, I think that's a really big thing right now. A lot of people think that all of that investment advisors do financial planning, and I'm going to go out on a limb and say that most people do not do financial planning and they're doing Investment Management. So this is a big topic and I've been asked by a lot of people in the industry, because we do financial planning, we gone with the subscription base, it's growing, it's doing well. But I was asked, why do you think Rich, advisors aren't doing this? And we talked about it at my last podcast with Alyssa Poulin, but just in case you didn't listen, I'll say, I think there's couple different reasons.

Richard:

One, I think, our industry as a financial planner, most of us listening probably didn't go to college to become a financial planner, we went to school to be an accountant, we own a property casualty business, we were chefs, whatever. I mean, I've seen people in our industry from their backgrounds, which you would never imagine. So as a investment advisor, where you learned business on our own through wholesalers or broker dealers education, maybe some courses we took, maybe professional designation.

Richard:

So financial planning is intimidating if you don't have that background. So I always say, identify who you are and what you're going to do. Don't be someone you can't be, don't promise a client a financial comprehensive plan and then go sign up for the program to go figure out how to do it. So saying that, there's also the RegBI best interest and I think with fee compression coming down, clients are going to expect more, they're not going to ask you to lower their fees, they're going to ask for more, a value proposition. What can they get from you they can't get from going to Vanguard, Charles Schwab?

Richard:

And part of that is a relationship for one. Understanding their household, their goals, their objectives, getting to know their children, and that's important. So there's usually two kinds of financial plans we do, we do goal based plans, which are very simple. So if you don't have that strong background, that's where I would start. Start with a goal based financial plan because the most important part about the plan is not the plan itself, it's the conversation you have with the client to get the plan done.

Richard:

And as you feel more comfortable or if you already are, we have the cash flow planning, we call it advanced planning, we call it holistic planning, where we're looking at everything, but the biggest difference is cash flow planning takes every dollar from the day one of the plan, where a goal based planning will start at the time of what that plan is. So if it's retirement, you're retiring at 67, it's going to assume all these projections till 67 on growth, and then you'll be able to display the output from retirement on.

Erik:

So can I simplify some of everything you just said there? Because you got technical man, I got a little glassy eyed and like, oh my gosh, what's he talking? He's getting too technical here for this podcast. I think what you just said is really important is when we're giving advice or planning for a client, we have to be able to support and display the reason for our advice to our clients. And when we have technology that helps us look forward into the future, if I can something as simple as show a client what it's going to look like if they max out their 401k for the next 10 years, next 15 years, and I can show them what that looks like in their cash flow, the position that they're going to be in, in 20 years, then that's powerful. And financial planning softwares can tie that with everything else.

Erik:

The problem that you were talking about financial planning is oftentimes, as financial advisors, we think we're comprehensive, right, but we're really not. We're giving advice specific to an investment, specific to an insurance product. And financial planners, and I think that there's a big push to elevate the profession of financial planner, is, yes, you might need a million dollars of life insurance, but you also have a lot of debt, and you also need to do this other thing financially. And our job as financial planners is to make hard decisions backed up with some evidence that says, hey, look, this is what you should be doing with your money, this is what you should be doing over here, and this is what you should be doing over here. And what a financial planning software technology will do, pull all those things in one place so we can display that evidence and that value to the client.

Richard:

So I think with the financial planning software category, first you have to identify your limits, what you want to do, and then you actually have to download these programs or get an online demo request, because they're all different, the output is different, the input is different, how complicated it's going to be. So I would touch these programs and go with one and be committed to it. The one thing you don't want to do is if it's going to be a core part of your business and you're going to grow, you may want to look for a company which offers the goal based planning and an advanced planning module where you can upgrade later, because if you start with the base plan and your clients are on board, and they have their own website portal, and then you decide later that you want to go more advanced, you got to start all over again.

Richard:

So plan for the future, do a business model on what you want it to look like, and think about going with a company who has the goal based and events, because if you upgrade your events, all that data comes over, client doesn't have to create a new portal, it just opens the cashflow planning part of the program. I know a lot of the programs offer both type of planning all at one.

Erik:

Yes, and I would say on financial planning software, if you are a financial planner, if planning is core to what you're doing, if you're building your practice around the idea of giving advice to clients outside of just their investment portfolio, then your financial planning software is a piece of technology that you don't want to make your decision around the cost of the software, you want to make a decision around what's the best software that's going to help me meet the needs of my client.

Richard:

It's interesting, part of that business decision you have to make is what billing structure you're going to do. Some advisors are doing the plans for free, some will charge, that's something else you have to take into consideration for.

Richard:

Erik, let's keep going. We're already at a half hour about and we try to keep these around 40 minutes. So I know that we might rush a few of these topics but that's okay because we're going to come back on future podcasts and be more detailed on each of these topics. Research software is big. When I got in the industry I worked for a midsize accounting firm and I think we spent $10,000, $20,000 on research, CCH, publications, and things like that.

Richard:

When I spun off and started my own accounting practice and my own financial planning practice, I rented space in an office in a financial planning building. And I came in with all my research books, and I noticed that people were coming to borrow and were asking me questions. I'm like, don't you have research? Don't you pay for this stuff? So they don't and what I realized is, and I'm not saying our listeners fall into this category, but a lot of advisors find ways not to pay for things. They're frugal, they go to Google, they do their research and things like that. And why pay for Morningstar when I can just go to the Morningstar website?

Erik:

[crosstalk 00:30:39] finance is just fine, right?

Richard:

The professional version or the free one?

Erik:

The free one. Here, I would say on research, we have multiple places where we can go to research. One of the places to me is just not user friendly and I wouldn't have to pay anything extra and I have, and it's just not user friendly, and it just doesn't make my job easy to research on it, just the display, the output, and then to communicate it to the client, it's just like, man, we can do better than that. So-

Richard:

Well, sometimes the research is just for you.

Erik:

It is.

Richard:

As you say, I'm an encyclopedia of the tax code, I can tell you a publication to go find things that-

Erik:

Yes, but there's some clients who want more information than others. And I think we have to have discernment to give our clients the amount of research that they want, not too much, and not much less. I have some clients who if I start talking about performance numbers, and alpha and beta, their eyes just roll, they just want to know if their account, is my account value higher today than it was yesterday or at the beginning of the year? And I have some clients that, I mean, they'll break down my portfolio. We had a conversation recently, I had a client, she called out one specific holding that was 10% of one of our portfolios.

Richard:

10% of one portfolio, that's a big holding.

Erik:

It is a big holding. It is a big holding. She was saying, "We need to change that one holding." And I talked to her and put it in perspective why we had that holding, that holding is actually doing what it's supposed to be doing, but I was able to lean on my research software to show that. Our research software better be more advanced than what our clients are using or doing.

Richard:

If you're going to those free sites, it's the same sites your clients are going to, their 401k portals have Morningstar reports. When you're paying for Workstation or Microsoft Office, I'm sorry, when your clients are going to these sites ... My background, my portal started talking to me, my Facebook portal, sorry about that.

Erik:

That's technology going bad. Tell your technology that you're recording a podcast Rich.

Richard:

So, your clients have the same access to the free stuff, if not, they probably even have a cleaner and better because they take the same data and make it cleaner for them to understand since they're not in the industry. So, I would invest in some technology, your broker dealer probably has it, trading platforms usually give you a base Morningstar or if people are using Evestnet, they have research tabs and so forth.

Richard:

And part of research, and we're not going to go into today, is not just research on codes and things like that or your portfolio investment, alpha betas all that, but what the big thing right now with RegBI is your stress testing. Having a way to research to find out if your portfolios, when you built them but drift and everything are still in compliance. So I don't know if that's research or some kind of compliance, but I just want to mention it there.

Richard:

So Erik, we talked on a little bit when we talked about CRMs, accordance of being able to move data from one place to another place, so how do we get that data? I know there's companies out there like PreciseFP, I'm a big user of eMoney where I onboard them, where they type a lot of their stuff in, I enter stuff in and I get the data that way, my Wealthbox gets me data. So that to me is key. Without getting that data, and the more I don't have to touch it, the better.

Erik:

Yes, the data collection process, it's like a unicorn man. I've been chasing ways to make it more efficient, to make it better, and it's so dependent on the client. I got some clients who I'll send them a link to PreciseFP and I get everything back within a week and it's perfect, and then I get some back and it's like, I got to have an hour conversation with them to clarify everything that they put on there. I have some clients that I can send them to eMoney and they can put all their data in and aggregate it all and it's perfect, but that's a tough one.

Erik:

I think sometimes, in my process, I send something digitally to get the conversation started to see what they can get me, and I always say follow up within a week with a conversation, whether it's a Zoom or a phone call, just to clarify, just to get them started, get them moving. But I would say, I normally allocate three weeks in the financial planning process for data gathering. So in my workflow, three weeks to get information, whether it's digitally or manually, before we move on.

Richard:

In my financial planning program, where I gather a lot of my data, I allow the clients to update their data themselves. Which is very scary because you could be spending hours on the financial plan and then all sudden, they go in and they code something wrong, and so forth. For those who use eMoney, this is a hidden gem, they don't really promote it too much. They have something called Assurance, it's an extra $500 a year, don't quote me on that, but I think it's around $500 a year per user. And what you can do is, it for compliance tracking, but you can go in and filter it by client only, you can filter by client or all your clients. I can see what client went in every day, what they change, I can see the changes, went from this to this.

Richard:

So if I see a client who's actively onboarding and putting stuff, I'll take a look what they're doing and make sure they're on the right track. If I see a client out of the blue change something which is going to affect the plan, I have to look at it, and without them knowing I'm looking at it, when I'm done and I analyze it, I send an email or I call them up, hey, I noticed that you just changed your data on your financial plan, I run some reports for you, I put them in your vault, some stress testing, it looks good still, didn't affect the plan at all. Well, you're buying a Porsche Taycan for $125,000, we never really projected those monthly payments, we really should talk about this.

Richard:

So if you're using eMoney, I would ask for a demo of Assurance because it's awesome. Every morning, I come in the office, that's one of the first things I look at to see what my clients did on the financial planning portals.

Erik:

Yes. I think the data collection process obviously if we're using planning software, it's going to be integral to because you've got to get the data into your planning software. And I think one thing that's really important, from a technology standpoint, that us as advisors ... I remember when Robo-advisor came out 10 years ago, when they became big, and you probably had similar conversations with some advisors, everyone was afraid, oh my gosh, what's going to happen to us? These Robo-advisors-

Richard:

Our broker dealer was going to allow us to build our own models and promote them as Robo advisor. And I came out and said, "I will never do that because what makes my business work is the relationship."

Erik:

Yes. So I agree with you. And this is what I said 10 years ago and I still hold to this today, and this is why think technology so important, the reason Robo-advisor, remember I said, What's the problem? What's the problem? Your technology should solve the problem. Most people didn't want to engage a financial advisor so here you had this amazing piece of software, the user interface is beautiful, the user experience is easy, people can go in, they feel good, they feel like they're doing something, but they missed that human touch, they missed that person who knows everything about them that can give them specific advice to their situation.

Erik:

So where the Robo-advisor were right, they said, hey, there's this whole segment of people who are not engaging financial advisors, let's fill it with this technology that is so user friendly. So I think us as advisors who understand, yes, that's good, but the relationship is important, right, because we know things that the algorithms don't know, we can give very specific advice.

Erik:

So I think that advisors like us, if we understand and accept the fact that no, we need to get better with our technology, particularly our client facing technology, the technology that we use to interact with our clients, we've got to make that an easier experience for the client, whether it's opening an account. Have you ever opened up a Schwab account versus some other accounts? These accounts, man, this is so much easier than this one, why would anyone want to go through this process when they can go through that process? So if advisors-

Richard:

Erik, I just had to open an account for my son, he's going to be 17 in May and I figure I'll just go to Schwab. It's right down the street, he can go make deposits, he can have a ... I want him to take some initiative to learn what I do and how to manage money, so I wanted him to be able to go somewhere and talk to someone besides his dad. So once you go online to open a Schwab account, and they don't allow minor accounts. I couldn't believe it. So I had to go to Vanguard. And you know as much as I do, there's only a handful of firms you and I are allowed to use for outside accounts, so it was very limited.

Erik:

Yes. But the point is our technology needs to interface well with our clients, it needs to be accessible to them, it needs to be something that attracts them and it doesn't detract them. So our entire technology suite, the experience that they have from booking an appointment with us, to the onboarding process, to the receiving their statements, to having client meetings, all that I think is so important in ultimately in the client experience. And I think that's why technology is important, that if we're going to scale, technology is going to help us scale efficiently. And also, not just for the purpose of scaling efficiently, but ultimately to be able to deliver advice to our clients in a way that's accessible to them.

Richard:

So Erik, we're already past the 40 minute mark. So I know we were going to talk about client meetings in Zoom, and chart, and flow charts, and different presentation software, let's hold that off for a future podcast because you and I love technology, we could be doing this for 24 hours and still have plenty to talk about. So since I'm making this comment, I'm going to have the opportunity to throw the closing to you.

Erik:

The closing to me. I would say, with technology, diagnose your problem, what are you trying to solve? Solve one at a time. Once you know that, find the technology to solve that problem for you. And ask around, ask what other advisors are doing. This is an industry where we love to share our thoughts, we love to share what's working for us, what works for you might not work for somebody else. What works for Rich doesn't always work for me and vice versa, and I think that's something that you need to understand and to implement that we're really understanding that at the core that what's right for me, it's like advice that we give to clients, what's right for this client might not be right for that client. There's different technology solutions out there, your clientele is different than mine, so use technology that is best suited for your practice with your clients.

Richard:

I just want to add one more thing to that, there's a big term we use now called tech stack. So, if you're really looking to upgrade your technology in your office, I would take a piece of paper and write down all the categories you want to cover. Before you engage in trying to find one vendor for that one problem or solution you're trying to find, make sure that program might help with the data input that we were talking about, the API's and so forth, to gain the data into the next problem or the next things you need a solution for.

Richard:

So again, if you're looking for a CRM, maybe you want to make sure your CRM or your social media marketing program automatically creates little clips, video clips, or auto posts into Facebook, Twitter, whatever social media program you want to use. In our firm, we get to submit through compliance and have it posted at the same time, which is really nice. So figure out a tech stack before you just hiring one vendor at a time and then realizing your limitation on what you just signed up for. So Erik, you want to talk about show notes and things like that?

Erik:

Show notes, yes. Anything that we talked about that would be relevant to this conversation will be in the show notes. How was that?

Richard:

That's great. Maybe if they have any future topics or they want to be a guest on our show, maybe that would be-

Erik:

Yes, if you're doing something cool with technology, we'd love to hear from you. Yes, anything that we mentioned in this show that would be relevant, we'll go ahead and put those in the show notes. We'd love to hear from you. We'd love for you to follow us, you can find that Financial Planner's Desk on any of the major podcast listening apps. So follow us and we'll see you next week.

Speaker 1:

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