Ep23 - Rethink: Ask Us Anything – If You Could Start Over

In this hosts-only "Ask Us Anything" episode, Adam and Derek open up their own careers to answer live audience questions on what they would do differently if they could start over. They cover investing in mentorship, putting money back into the business, building a personal brand earlier, and Derek's experience going almost fully remote nine years ago with minimal client loss. The candid, unscripted format gives advisors a rare look at the founders' own missteps and turning points, alongside practical takeaways on practice management, marketing, and entrepreneurship.

• What Adam and Derek would do differently starting over
• The value of finding a mentor early in a financial services career
• Reinvesting profits back into the business versus banking them
• Building a personal brand and online presence sooner
• Going remote: client retention, technology, and lifestyle tradeoffs
• Live audience Q&A on practice management, fintech, and staffing

Full timestamped transcript.

[00:00:00] H. Adam Holt: Welcome to Rethink: The Financial Advisor Podcast. My name is Adam Holt.

[00:00:06] Derek Notman: And this is Derek Notman. We are your hosts, both veteran advisors and fintech CEOs who challenge the status quo, question everything, and have fun doing it. Hear honest commentary on the challenges facing advisors today. And be part of a community where we can all rethink the profession.

Now on to our episode.

[00:00:31] H. Adam Holt: If you could start over, what would you do differently?

[00:00:36] Derek Notman: It's a great question. I've had a lot of times over the years where I've reflected on just that, and I, I, you know, you and I get asked this all the time too. Like, "Hey," like, "how would you do it over again? What would you do differently? You know, what kind of stuff should I be asking?"

You know, the, the, the list is endless. And, you know, we were really inspired by our, our Rethink podcast- Mm-hmm ... and also by a, a post I did about a video I did on LinkedIn, like, two weeks ago. Like, there are a ton of advisors out there with a ton of questions, and what better way to give back than to just do it live, raw, and like, you know, help people out?

I don't know. What do you think?

[00:01:12] H. Adam Holt: Well, look, I mean, we get asked this question all the time by, you know, young and old advisors alike, right? What we call our peers, and also the ones that we're mentoring, and it's been a great blessing for us to, to really spend this time together and, and do the podcast. So if you guys haven't checked it out, it's really been a fun, uh, a passion project for us we know that has now touched thousands of people, which is, we're really, really amazed by.

You know, I think, um, this live session gives us an opportunity to, of course, remind everybody that we're actually humans just like you guys. We, we sometimes get dressed and wear nice shirts. Woo. Uh, you know, we come from the business and I, I think, uh, one of the, the challenges, of course, we were worried about is that these things can get boring real fast, and that's why with Rethink, the podcast, we tried to create a whole new structure that financial advisors who've learned ADD or have it otherwise really wouldn't get lost in.

So, you know, I'm curious, uh, what do you think that, uh, what do you think we can do today? What can we achieve today that's gonna help everybody?

[00:02:04] Derek Notman: Well, l- let's make it as interactive as possible. Just like when we do, like, financial planning or other stuff for, um, our clients, like, they start to gloss over when you give them the 50-page financial plan, right?

Mm-hmm. They start to tune you out. They start to do other stuff. So, like, today, folks, like, this is interactive. We're gonna answer questions as quickly as we can for you. We're gonna keep our answers short and concise. Uh, let us know, like, what's on your mind. We've got a couple questions that already came in that we'll, uh, address.

Mm-hmm. But, like, this is for you. We're giving back. So, like, tell us. Tell us what you wanna know more about and we'll do our best.

[00:02:38] H. Adam Holt: Yeah. It's funny, you know, that a lot of people have asked us in kind of coming up into this, Derek, how, you know, what were the topics? What were the kind of categories you want to get asked about?

Well, again, like you said, it, it could be anything, but we, we wrote some down. Practice management, fintech, marketing, revenue generation, entrepreneurial experience, staffing. These are all things that Derek and I have 40 years combined experience in building as financial professionals, so it's probably appropriate that we explain our background.

Derek, why don't you kind of give us in, in two minutes or less if you can pull it off, two minutes, what's your background as a financial professional so everybody can understand where they're, where you're coming from?

[00:03:13] Derek Notman: Yeah. Uh, real quick, uh, I have my bachelor's degree in archeology, so not in this area at all.

Uh, found out I couldn't get a job- Hmm ... as Indiana Jones. Ended up getting recruited by a large life insurance company and really cut my teeth there for a number of years. Um, got my CFP in the process and a lot of other things. a lot of other designations. Um, and then recently, uh, went fully independent with my own RIA.

So I've been on a lot of different sides. Uh, but also created a fintech company. I've got another one in stealth mode now. So, like, really have seen the advisor space from a, a lot of different sides, which has been really cool. But that's, that's my real nutshell journey. Uh, tell me, Adam, what's, what's your background?

[00:03:57] H. Adam Holt: Well, that, that was like 30 seconds just so you- ... could do it. Like, so clearly you had a very boring financial services

[00:04:02] Derek Notman: career. Very boring, very boring.

[00:04:03] H. Adam Holt: Yeah, I just- I'm gonna use your extra minute and a half to waste more time.

[00:04:07] Derek Notman: You can take it. You're more accomplished than I am. I'm just this guy. Oh, I

[00:04:09] H. Adam Holt: know.

I got, like, five years on you or something. Um, although we're always reminded, you know, 'cause now you... We always talk about each other's, you know, hair. He's got white hair, but somehow I'm older and he's, you know... Anyway. I don't know how that works. So now for all of you that have been watching us, we- then you'd understand what I'm talking about 'cause I get to look at Derek every time we do a podcast.

Um, yeah, you know, just like you, ironically, I got into this business not in financial services from the onset. I was, I got a double major in, uh, in environmental planning and also business, and I got a job as a, in the government doing remote sensing, basically satellite imagery, uh, analysis, uh, to confirm in fact 30 years ago that either, you know, warming was happening or not.

Either way, global change was happening and, and I realized very quickly I didn't wanna work for the government or research combined. Nothing got done. So I got into, I went to a job fair and I took a job as a financial planner, realized I was a life insurance agent. Um, and, uh, you know, struggled for a long time, was, was about to quit and realized, um, I had some really good success doing some financial planning for free and it wound up resulting in, guess what, Derek?

Sales. I actually wound up, uh, doing really well- Wow ... and, and almost led my organization by my third year. And- Uh, realized that I should use financial planning as a way, as a sales enablement process, that I would earn the business from just delivering more. So for those of you that started in, uh, we'll call it product side, and then m- migrated into financial planning, that was my story too.

And wound up, um, I think a critical part, which I think you'll hear in part of our guidance to everybody, is I got a mentor, a couple mentors really early on, and they catapulted my career significantly. So, uh, got into the AUM business, built an asset management practice in about, um, I guess about now four or five years ago, left my managing partner role, uh, from the firm.

It got to about 25 people, about 1.2 billion assets under management, about 5 to 10 million of new life premium and, uh, health premium a year. We were doing a significant amount of business and I left that to run Asset-Map, our best practice that's now used by advisors around the world. So, uh, like you, went from, uh, you know, insurance to asset management, financial planning to now Techify, now full-time mentor, uh, and so forth.

So that's the, that's the path. I hope I used your minutes well.

[00:06:15] Derek Notman: You did. I appreciate that. I, and, uh, environmental science and working for the government. I don't know, man. I think you- Yeah ... I think you took the right path. But anyways, let's- Mm-hmm ... let's get into this for our, our advisors. I might have

[00:06:26] H. Adam Holt: have a...

By the way, I have a pension. If I stayed, I would've had a pension after 30 years. You know, a pension. What was it? Was it worth it? Yeah, it's cool.

[00:06:32] Derek Notman: Um-

[00:06:33] H. Adam Holt: Sorry, I cut you off.

[00:06:34] Derek Notman: No, it's all good, man. Those are our backgrounds. All right, well, I think we need to get into it and, and start a- you know, answering some questions.

We've already got some coming in, which is awesome. So I think, like, we can go in and just start answering some of these right off the bat if you want, Adam. What do you think?

[00:06:51] H. Adam Holt: Well, yeah, I, I'm happy to. I think, I, I think, uh, we can do... Well, let's do our plan. Let's, let's work our plan. Um, I think- Thought so

that one of the, the ones that, let me ask you this question. You know, a lot of advisors have asked us throughout the years, both at different venues, "What would you do differently if you were starting over again?" Clearly, we started in different businesses that are today. Derek, what would you do differently?

You get this opportunity, what would you do differently?

[00:07:15] Derek Notman: Yeah, I, I, I had to sum it up in a couple quick things. Obviously, you can drill down on these much more, but overall, it was focus on advice instead of product. Hmm. You know, just like you said, like, within a couple years you were doing really, really well from a, an earning potential just because you had, had made that flip.

So I think that's really important. Another thing that I didn't do and I wish I would've, is actually put money back into my business, invest in my business, from marketing, branding, infrastructure, all the things. So, you know, instead, I put up a picture of a convertible and I bought sports cars and toys, and it was fun, but I didn't invest any of that money back in the business, so I really wish I would have.

Um- Mm ... and then I really wish I would've gone online sooner to start building my personal brand. I came to that place late, really late. Those are my top three. How about you?

[00:08:04] H. Adam Holt: You know, I, I, you know, looking back, I, I struggled too long in the early days just trying to kind of follow the, the party line. And I don't say that in a disparaging way, right?

I was taught by a great company. I was very blessed to come into a strong, strong company. Um, what I didn't realize is that how, how much a mentor was gonna mean to me. When I, when I wound up teaming up with two of the top producers who were estate planners in the country, um, all of a sudden they catapulted my career probably a decade.

Uh, I learned processes. I learned how to actually do this. I learned from their experiences and mistakes. So the first thing I would do, and I would say that to everyone who's actually established, wherever you are in your practice, every one of us should find a role model And approach them unassumingly.

Approach them to be a mentor, right? Find out who you wanna be like, right? If you idealize somebody, their practice, maybe they're a, a really fantastic advisor or, or maybe they're not even our business. Ask them how to replicate what they're doing in your own business and take that mentorship just to accelerate your career.

So that, I, I think that has really been the biggest proponent of my own success. If I was gonna accelerate that even more, I would've gotten a mentor sooner and not waited five years. That's really my key.

[00:09:16] Derek Notman: I, I love that. I didn't find one until I was, like, eight or nine years into the business and man, I was yearning for it, so great advice.

Great advice.

[00:09:24] H. Adam Holt: Cool.

[00:09:24] Derek Notman: Um, all right. Let's, let's keep rolling with this 'cause I wanna start talking to some of the advisors that are chiming in today. So Adam, what was the best investment you ever made in your practice?

[00:09:34] H. Adam Holt: Well, I, I think for us, you know, I, we reinvented a bit, uh, in reinventing the wheel. Um, and I think what we did with Asset-Map was we just tried to solve a problem that we had, Derek, right?

We, we had a problem but we wanted to communicate basically everything that was going on in a family's life in one page, right? Because we needed to simplify their life, not make it more complicated, give them 80 pages. So when we did that and we kind of figured that out and we had such amazing results, you know, that investment increased my revenue 300% three years in a row.

So you can imagine kind of if you do the math on that from a compounding basis, that's a significant number and I, I, at the time I didn't really know what to do with the money, right? Oh, buy, buy, put it in the S&P. I decided to invest it and build technology. Now granted, I will tell you, that was a huge sinkhole, Derek, right?

Oh, huge. I spent hundreds of thousands of dollars of my own money trying to figure out how not to be a manager of a technology company, okay? I didn't know what I was doing. But what happened is is that because I focused so much on process and I was deeply invested in the process and making it work, I found a way to create scale and replicate it and require everybody in the firm to do it a certain way and the, the results of that was that now the rest of the firm started seeing significant gains.

So the point is is that when you deeply focus on a problem that you have in your organization and you not just focus your time, but you actually put new money into the problem, you create, I think, solutions that sometimes can actually go beyond what you even imagined they could do. So that's been- 100%

the single biggest investment I made, is the focus and the commitment of time and new money to solving a problem What about you? That's a brilliant- What's the best investment you ever made?

[00:11:18] Derek Notman: Well, it stemmed from a similar, uh, situation. I had a problem. Um, my problem was that I was working way too many hours- Mm

traveling way too much to see clients, and missing time with my family, and my whole life had gotten out of balance. I was unhealthy mentally, physically. I was making good money, but what good is that? Um- Yeah ... so, you know, I retooled my entire business to go remote back in 2013, and it was a game changer. I was able to reduce my overhead by about 61%, and my income has not grown 300% a year, but it was, you know, double-digit returns consistently every year because of that.

Mm. And I had a ton of my time back, so I was able to spend more time with my family and so forth. Um, so that was a lot of fun because it came from a need, like a real pain point. Like I... There's a gotta be a better way to do things, so I did it. There was a hell of a lot of learning curves, as I'm sure you found out being a technology guy, but-

[00:12:12] H. Adam Holt: Yeah

[00:12:12] Derek Notman: it made a huge difference. Um, and that's, that was the impetus for me to create Connectors because a ton of advisors were asking, "Well, how the heck are you doing this?"

[00:12:20] H. Adam Holt: That's funny.

[00:12:21] Derek Notman: So,

[00:12:21] H. Adam Holt: yeah. You and I have that interesting crossover because both of us went remote much earlier than the p- those that went with the pandemic, right?

So I, we moved our firm remote 80, 90% about seven or eight years ago because- Wow ... it was just much more efficient, and was, that was actually what kind of what brought us together in many ways-

[00:12:37] Derek Notman: Yeah ...

[00:12:37] H. Adam Holt: is we recognized that, that you were doing some awesome stuff at Connector that we could also, uh, replicate, so I think that's really cool.

Um, you know, I'm curious. You know, we, we have already set up one other question for you, and it, and it's what decision changed the trajectory of your practice immeasurably? Immeasurably.

[00:12:57] Derek Notman: Well, I think that goes without saying. Going remote. Total game changer. And, you know, I get a lot of questions from advisors, "Well, do I have to go completely remote?"

No, you don't. I did. I, I mean, I guess I'm 99% remote. I- Mm-hmm ... I will have the odd in-person meeting if a client requests it, but it was a total game changer. I make more money, I spend less money, I have more time, I have more happiness, I'm able to work from wherever I feel like working. Total game changer. Um, so yeah, that, that's it.

How about you? What was the

[00:13:27] H. Adam Holt: biggest win? Yeah, well, well I have a follow-on question for you because- Okay ... you, you know that I, I get comments from this all the time is, but number one, how are your clients gonna really handle going 100% remote? And number two, how do you, how do you make sure that you can deliver the same kind of quality experience that, you know, they don't get to come into an office?

Like, do they, do... Is, do people really believe that you can go remote How do you, I mean, how do you really answer that?

[00:13:53] Derek Notman: Well, that was the thing I was worried about 'cause I didn't know what would happen when I did it, right? 'Cause there was this, there's this perception in our industry that you gotta wear the suit and tie and have the office where people can come in.

And I had all that. I had a huge office that I bought and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So I did all of that, and then I went fully remote. Guess how many clients I lost

[00:14:16] H. Adam Holt: I can't

[00:14:16] Derek Notman: guess One. One.

[00:14:17] H. Adam Holt: One? Wow.

[00:14:19] Derek Notman: That's it. One for going remote. Okay. Um, so that's, that's real proof, right? Like, it... I went remote in 2013.

That's nine years ago. I lost one client because of it. Mm-hmm. Um, I have clients ranging from their 20s to their 80s, right? So that works. Um, now how do you provide the same experience? Well, one is communication. You better communicate with your clients really, really well. And then using amazing tech. And yes, I do use Asset-Map by the way, folks, as part of- Mm-hmm

part of my tech stack. But using amazing tech, having an amazing experience, we teach all of this in Connector so that people feel really good about it. And let's face it, we do everything else online, from dating to banking to health, all this other stuff. So if you can provide the most amazing experience- Mm-hmm

they're gonna be fine with it, especially if they don't have to set aside time for you to come over and sit in their kitchen at 6:00 at night.

[00:15:07] H. Adam Holt: Yeah.

[00:15:07] Derek Notman: Right?

[00:15:08] H. Adam Holt: That's interesting. Yeah, well, I, I can obviously relate. So for me, um, it was, it was all around this idea of hourly rate. So I always had a coach. Um, I can name all the different coaches I've had throughout the years.

Been a real big fan of it. Clearly that's why the mentorship thing is important to me.

[00:15:22] Derek Notman: Yep.

[00:15:23] H. Adam Holt: Um, and one of them said to me, they said, "Adam, what's your hourly rate?" And at the time, you know, I was running, you know, doing 60, 70 hours of work, uh, a week. Uh, you know, and no one saw me at all. I mean, my family. I was working like crazy, and I'd gotten to the point where I was making a good amount of money, but I had to work to do it.

I belie- I believed I had to work for it. Um, and I, and I was taught this idea of this non-office office. So I created... I got a bigger office, it took on more overhead. And I got this huge office, it was a double size office, and I put this huge conference room. I built furniture at the time, so I... That was my hobby, some, in some of those hours there.

And I built this beautiful table, and that was my conference room and my office, and I lived in that room. And the whole goal was literally to try to go from five-day work weeks to a one-day work week, and it was Tuesday. And my goal was, according to my coach at the time, he's like, he's like, "What's your goal per hour if you only could work one day a week?"

I said, "Well, I wanna make $1,000 an hour." " $1,000 an hour?" "Yes. And I only wanna work one hour, one day a week, because I want the rest of the time to work on my fun projects, building, technology, family, et cetera." And literally, it took me two years to get there, but it totally changed my entire life. Could you imagine having all that time left?

Now when we went- Oh my gosh ... remote, all of a sudden, guess what happened? Clients couldn't meet me on Tuesday, so I had to do what? I had to go remote in order to meet their needs and not lose them, and so that's what I did. Tuesday was in the, in the office. The rest of the week was sporadic remote meetings, and once I got that, I got the bug, and Tuesday was out.

There you go. I wound up only working Tuesday mornings, and then the rest of the time was my time. I didn't even have to go to the office. So that was how I was able to actually take the time to build a tech company, is because I'd figured out how to just basically delegate everything that wasn't Adam time, um, and try to get my hourly rate up to 1,000 an hour, which was not easy.

It didn't happen overnight, but there was-

[00:17:15] Derek Notman: No, it doesn't ... it,

[00:17:17] H. Adam Holt: um. I

[00:17:17] Derek Notman: love that, man. That's awesome. That, that's just proof positive and it- it's kind of addicting, right? As you said, like, you're like, "Wow, this is kinda nice, this whole remote thing. I'm gonna do more of it."

[00:17:27] H. Adam Holt: It is addictive, right? And you live literally around the world.

You keep moving your family around for some crazy reason. And, you know, they don't even know where they are. Like to

[00:17:35] Derek Notman: travel. Right. I'm not even in the military, right?

[00:17:37] H. Adam Holt: I know. It's true. That's cool. Awesome. All right. So, so we got through our, our, our questions that we had been getting, gotten, uh, the, in beforehand.

Let's go to our community and ask how we can serve. Okay? So what do you see, first of all... We see lots of compliments, so thank you, by the way, for that. Yeah. Thanks, everybody. That's, that's cool. We appreciate it. Um, where, uh... Okay, here we go. So I- do you see Jeff's, uh, comment here about tech software?

[00:18:04] Derek Notman: Oh,

[00:18:04] H. Adam Holt: we can actually show it.

Look,

[00:18:05] Derek Notman: here's the- Yep, there it is.

[00:18:06] H. Adam Holt: Yeah. Look at that.

[00:18:08] Derek Notman: Look at that. All right. Woo! You can pull it out. Look at that. Technology, guys.

[00:18:09] H. Adam Holt: All right. Let's... You got it. What does it say, Derek?

[00:18:12] Derek Notman: All right. So, uh, tech software for marketing. How much? Snappy, advisor stream, seven group, tons of choices. Could be overwhelming to lean towards.

Yeah, see, that's true. Definitely start small. Mm. I think that's the perfect spot there, Jeff. This is a great question, 'cause it can feel like you're drinking from a fire hose. Everyone's telling you to go do this, go do that. You gotta start with, like, a smaller set for your tech stack and work out to that, and none of the marketing tools out there are gonna help you at all if you don't know what your brand is, who your ideal client is, all of that kind of stuff.

So you almost wanna take a step back first and figure that out. Um, and then when you go to these marketing, you know, places, you can tell them what you're actually looking to do and who for.

[00:18:54] Announcer: Hmm.

[00:18:54] Derek Notman: Um, yeah, so I think start, start get... You know, slow down. Um, personally, I don't use any of these. Not that they're bad.

There's a ton of great resources out there. I actually have a digital marketing team that I pay. They're all remote, I've never actually met them, um, that handle all of this stuff, and we create the majority of our content in-house and then publish. Um, Adam, what would you- what would be your answer to that question?

[00:19:16] H. Adam Holt: Well, it's tough. You know, I'm friends with these founders that, that run these companies, and so I know them and their products pretty well. Um, you know, it really depends on what I think you're trying to achieve. Derek said it already, and, and we keep beating this drum on the podcast, 'cause a lot of advisors out there are trying to figure out, "How I'm gonna get the next client?"

We, we do know a lot of you that have been established have been able to kind of get by, and I know that because my firm has too. Because the markets were growing, the revenue was coming in, we're delivering more services, people have stickiness. They come back, we keep solving more and more problems. So the revenue problem hasn't been there on the growth side so much.

Eh, if the markets change and, you know, we don't see kind of, uh, incremental growth in the, in the assets under management, all of a sudden we're gonna have to ask this question about marketing That all being said, what's really important in the marketing is number one is making sure you have consistent brand awareness.

So that's a commitment from each of us. Yeah. If you're gonna use social media and you want to... The, the key is authenticity, despite the fact that most of these automation don't always give you a very authentic approach, right? They're just- they're putting a post that's maybe relevant to the mass population.

AdvisorStream tries to do this, I think pretty well. Uh, I'm pretty impressed with what they've been able to do in terms of customizing the content from public media that can get to your customer base, uh, on an, on an ungated basis. I think that's pretty cool. What I think Snappy's done a great job of is, is actually creating campaigns that consistently drip and get your name in front of the clients, and they actually do have an Asset-Map one, which is why I know about it.

You can drip this. But I think the key is number one, whatever you choose to do, you gotta commit to it. It's not a I s- bought, I bought this soft- software and that's good enough. You've gotta commit to it, learn it, and then really use that in the field, uh, consistently. And I, I think that's the key. If you're using it also for, uh, just engagement with your ongoing customers, it could be an effective tool there.

I wouldn't look at it as a marketing strategy. I'd look at it as a client engagement and retention strategy- Yeah,

[00:21:18] Derek Notman: that's a

[00:21:19] H. Adam Holt: good point ... if you're just sending

[00:21:20] Derek Notman: out newsletters. Yeah. I think I would add one analogy to help you think about this. There are different types of hand drills, for example. You talk about building furniture, Adam, right?

There's different types of tools and there's different quality levels of those tools, but there's no difference in a hammer that costs a dollar and one that costs 50 bucks if the person isn't using it, right? Mm-hmm. You gotta use the tool, otherwise it's not gonna do anything. So anyways-

[00:21:43] H. Adam Holt: Totally ...

[00:21:43] Derek Notman: great question, Jeff.

By the way, that

[00:21:44] H. Adam Holt: means invest in training too, though. We see that a lot. People buy the tool and then they don't go through the training and the onboarding. And then they don't do it. You have to do it, and if you have staff, you gotta bring them with you, 'cause that someone's gotta support you, uh, in executing this.

It's gotta be a- Exactly ... high-level KPI. You know, that actually... I, I see another question here, Derek. I don't know if you mind if I just throw this out there. Go for

[00:22:03] Derek Notman: it. Take it, man. Yeah, let's do it.

[00:22:04] H. Adam Holt: Um, this looks like it comes from Kyle. "What key metrics do you track within your practices? Specific sales or AUM metrics for producers?

What metrics or KPIs do you evaluate your staff on?" This is really strong. Great. Derek, do you have one?

[00:22:19] Derek Notman: Or you- You know, I, I'm actually retooling all this now because I did go independent recently. So what I'm tracking is a little bit different. But, you know, for me it's, it- I think the key metrics I'm looking at is definitely is AUM, but what's, like, my gross revenue?

What's my net net? You know, looking at all of my expenses. We track that on a monthly basis. New clients in, uh, and also client retention, right? I think those are the big- Mm-hmm ... ones that I really like to look at. But then we also get into the weeds a bit with, like, email marketing that we're tracking. How are our social media campaigns doing?

So we have a lot of social or digital marketing components that we also track, um, because if we do those well, then we know that the AUM numbers and the retention and all those other things will also do well. They all are interconnected.

[00:23:06] H. Adam Holt: Mm.

[00:23:06] Derek Notman: How about you? What did, what do you do, Adam?

[00:23:08] H. Adam Holt: You know, I don't... I think we really did a poor job at this one.

Um, at the firm level, you know, i- in the early days we were more of a federation than a firm, right? Each advisor was kind of, you know, eating what they killed and then-

[00:23:21] Derek Notman: Oh, yeah ...

[00:23:21] H. Adam Holt: you know, paying their overhead, and then we would do community overhead, and then staff would sort of report to any one person.

They would decide they're paying out of their own pocket. And, you know, we had several hundred thousand dollar expense just in overhead for staff alone, but it was because we made more money than we spent, and that was kind of good enough, right? Like, how did we know we did well this year? Well, we s- we made more than we spent.

And it was more than enough to pay the mortgage, so we were like, "Okay, that's good."

[00:23:44] Derek Notman: Yeah, okay, I'm all right.

[00:23:45] H. Adam Holt: That's, like, how loose we were. But, you know, as it got a little bit bigger, we... There's some really critical roles we started to recognize. One is that operationally we, we really weren't paying attention to the details.

Lots of money was falling through the cracks. We weren't being efficient. And you- all of a sudden when you start making more money, it's like y- small cracks have, like, real big leaks in them. So we hired, uh, individuals and, and, and empowered part of our team members to give them a path, a career path, and said, "Okay, now you're in charge of operations.

Now you're, uh, in charge of the, uh, of the, uh, paraplanning team. Now you're in charge of underwriting." We just d- we made heads and we kind of allowed them to choose their own KPIs and tell us what are their KPIs, and then we would hold that to them and, and we would tie their bonuses to them based upon that, 'cause we had read that in books.

I know a lot of practice, uh, managers are using OKR Uh, which is all about results, uh, and what do you expect to happen before the end of the year? And I know that we were introduced, um, through my coach to Attraction from Gino Wickman, which is a really fantastic framework to create KPIs and then run meetings accordingly, and then set some standards.

I think that's really great to check out. Excuse me. Check it out. Uh, that's Traction by Gino Wickman. It's the An Entrepreneurial Operating System, and I've really loved it. I've taken elements from that, uh, that helped us kind of create KPIs. But it is important. In the tech company, that is all managed. We have a lot of infrastructure here, and we look at KPIs all the time.

What are we looking at? We're looking at obviously customer retention, customer growth. Uh, you know- Yeah ... are we keeping as much revenue as possible? I think it's the same thing in the financial services business, but we just ne- we need to kind of get more aware of what, what and why we're doing this. Just like we look at clients' performance, we should be looking at our own performance.

Um, and there's lots of opportunity to grow. On a regular

[00:25:37] Derek Notman: basis.

[00:25:38] H. Adam Holt: Yeah.

[00:25:38] Derek Notman: Don't go a year

[00:25:38] H. Adam Holt: out. Anybody has comments, you should put those comments. If you have a great answer, please share with the community. Yeah.

[00:25:43] Derek Notman: Or a link to a resource, put 'em in there. Everyone can get access to this.

[00:25:46] H. Adam Holt: Amen. Amen.

[00:25:47] Derek Notman: Um, awesome. All right, let's jump into another one here.

I was... This is actually from Kyle. Again, he's got a couple, um, questions here. I'm gonna put this one up, 'cause I think this one's relevant to s- uh, I'm sure this could be a lot of people thinking about this. "I went through this whole journey last year. Um, it was a lot more stressful than it probably needed to be, partially 'cause I was just scared."

Uh, but so biggest concern is compliance, right? Um, it depends how big your shop is, right? If you have a multiple advisor shop, you should probably have a dedicated compliance person, whether it's an outsourced person or someone in-house that does that. There's also a lot of great tech that can facilitate this.

If you are gonna be a solo RIA shop, which I am, um, and I don't have any registered access persons other than myself- ... I am my compliance person. Mm-hmm. So it's really easy, and I have tech that helps facilitate that, but it's actually a lot less scary and concerning than you might think it is. So Kyle, it's not that bad, actually.

Um, it's been somewhat commoditized by this point. Um, and I came from a large insurance broker-dealer environment where I was always scared to death of things, so it's not as bad as you think. Good question.

[00:26:59] H. Adam Holt: Um- You know, that's actually... You know, I read, read this from Mateo. He- you know, it's good to, good to see some old friends.

Um, he asked this with respect to the broker-dealer spot. So I actually did-- We had a side RIA, um, but it wasn't really our primary focus. So, you know, what, what Mateo says is, "Compliance is the biggest barrier with getting marketing that pushes the boundaries and builds an engaging brand. Any tips for big broker-dealer fans with really stalwart compliance when it comes to new ideas and channels of engagement like YouTube, um, or do RIAs simply have the leg on that?"

You know, it's, it's interesting from coming from the BD space, um, I talk and work with a lot of independent broker-dealers now, and I, I think one of the, one of the interesting things that, that we should recognize is that compliance teams are actually on your side, right? 100%. They're trying to facilitate-

[00:27:49] Derek Notman: Yes

[00:27:50] H. Adam Holt: uh, you continue to do business. 'Cause if you don't do business, they have no job, okay? Um, so they're really on your side, right? They're, they're like your lawyers. They're trying to protect you from yourself. Um, that being said, we have seen, especially with a lot of the, uh, financial services, uh, friends that we have out there, if they can stay authentic, Mateo, stay authentic, compliance doesn't really have much to say as long as you're not authentic about guarantees and performance and all that other stuff, right?

Yeah. What they're fearful of is that you're gonna commit the organization to an unrealistic expectation which is gonna come bite them in the tush, right? So we found that the best marketing is actually the most authentic, where you can be personal and talk about your wounds and what worked for you and, you know, relate actually at the family level to your clients and prospects so that they get to know you, right?

The presupposition is that you've got some level of skill in the business, but you wanna connect with people. So remember, you can go to your compliance, stalwart compliance departments and just maybe don't talk about business, right?

[00:28:55] Derek Notman: Totally. I mean- That- that's it. Like, I mean, uh, you and I both come from some of the most conservative and compliance, uh, environments in the industry.

Mm-hmm. So we've lived this for a very long time, and you're spot on. If you are just genuine and yourself- That's all you gotta do, right? Do that and the, the company, your compliance people are not gonna have a problem with it. It's when you start talking about products and returns and blah, blah, blah. One, most people don't wanna hear about that stuff initially, so that's kind of boring.

Yeah. But it's also gonna probably get you into trouble some way or another, so just don't do it, I think. So personalization, 100%, that's where you should be at.

[00:29:30] H. Adam Holt: So true.

[00:29:31] Derek Notman: And we got some great questions in here. I think you should do this one from TJ, just 'cause I think you know him.

[00:29:36] H. Adam Holt: You think? Let's see. What did TJ say?

It's probably riding

[00:29:40] Derek Notman: me. All right, here we go.

[00:29:43] H. Adam Holt: What can established advisors do in terms of marketing to differentiate themselves in the industry? Well, I guess they could be authentic, right? Um-

[00:29:53] Derek Notman: That's it, man.

[00:29:54] H. Adam Holt: Look, we've all heard this- That's the magic pill. Yeah, we've heard this 100 times, which is be, get a, be a niche player, right?

[00:30:01] Derek Notman: Yeah.

[00:30:01] H. Adam Holt: Be a niche. Serve a niche specifically. Show them that you understand their pain points.

[00:30:09] Derek Notman: Mm-hmm.

[00:30:09] H. Adam Holt: Show them through likely social media, and then of course public evidence of that, so when they look for you or they're looking for a specific pain point associated with their unique problem, you come up because there's enough content out there that's gonna be, uh, search engine optimized so that, that they'll find you.

I mean, it's the, the same story that Michael Kitces tells all the time about, you know, if, if you need a plumber, you call your neighbor. If you need an oncologist for a specialty, you go online and you look and you find who is that specialist regardless of where they are on the planet. Okay?

[00:30:43] Derek Notman: Exactly.

[00:30:44] H. Adam Holt: The, the, the higher paid person is likely the oncologist, and so the point is, is that when you focus or hyper niche and you create a brand arou- around it, business will come to you without you even asking.

[00:30:56] Derek Notman: Great answer. I don't even need to double down on that one. Perfect. We can just keep rolling- Yes ... with this. Nailed it. Awesome. Nailed it. Nailed it. All right, uh, let's see here. How about this one from Randy? This is cool. Um, Randy, thanks man. Hope you're doing well, buddy. Uh, so how hard is it to do our podcast?

How much time- Sure ... does it take? Do you do multiple episodes at once, edits, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Um, we don't do this in our basement. Mm-mm. Do it right here. I don't even have a basement. I don't even have one. Um, you know, I think the first couple were harder, but- Mm-hmm ... we, Adam and I have really come into a rhythm now where we're recording...

I mean, you're cool with me sharing this, right Adam? Like, what we're doing, a little bit of the sauce?

[00:31:40] H. Adam Holt: This is a share moment, man. Let's do it.

[00:31:41] Derek Notman: Right.

[00:31:41] H. Adam Holt: Share.

[00:31:42] Derek Notman: Yeah. So we're-

[00:31:43] H. Adam Holt: Secrets out.

[00:31:43] Derek Notman: All right. All right. Um, so yeah. Well, I mean, we're recording twice a month, and we have a format that we do on, on how we structure the conversation and the questions and all of that kind of stuff.

Um, and I mean, think honestly, I mean, each episode is probably taking each of us, like, two hours between actual recording and editing and stuff before and after- Mm-hmm ... give or take. Um, and then we have a team, ProudMouth, if you haven't heard of them, check them out. Mm-hmm. Um, they're the ones that are doing, like, the editing and the publishing and getting stuff, like, all sorted for us.

We don't monkey with any of that, so literally, like, we record, Adam sends them the link of the audio, and boom, it's done and it comes back to us for final, like, draft, edits, approval, that kind of thing. So, um, it is a commitment though, right, Adam? Like we had to commit, like it costs money, it costs time. You have to be very intentional, and you have to get in a rhythm.

Don't just kind of do it like you do like a, a Facebook post every once in a while. This is a real... It's, it's a real deal. You gotta really be invested

[00:32:44] H. Adam Holt: Yeah. I, and it's, you know what? It comes down to what's your audience, right? So our audience of our podcast is fellow advisors, right? People who've lived the same experience, many of you.

Uh, and we do ask that you subscribe to the podcast. In fact, there's a scrolling bar that's supposed to remind you that, that says, "Hey." Just in case you- Marketing.

[00:33:02] Derek Notman: Marketing ...

[00:33:04] H. Adam Holt: active, authentic marketing, right? We even put some jokes in there. Um, we do a lot ourselves, Randy, um, because we want it to be very much our voice and our little shtick together, and we wanted to rethink everything and challenge everything and reinvent the flywheel completely.

Um, but it's true, we wouldn't be able to do it without the support. Um, we do interview, as you probably know, some people. We, we try to find the coolest people we know, and we ask them very specific questions, and yeah, there's some, there's some stuff in there. But if you like talking, you like sharing, and it's a very much a one-way conversation, uh, if you like teaching, it's really, then it's a great way to- Mm-hmm

connect with people. We have some friends that have done this as advisors. ProudMouth actually works specifically with financial advisors and their- Yep ... compliance departments for this. So to the question before, um, we think that this is a really, really, um, big space. Think about how many people listen to audio and radio.

Sure. Podcasts is, podcast is replacing talk radio. Um-

[00:34:00] Derek Notman: It's blue ocean right now.

[00:34:01] H. Adam Holt: It is.

[00:34:01] Derek Notman: Especially for our industry, right? It really is.

[00:34:04] H. Adam Holt: And doesn't it give you a lot of credibility? Like, if you sent a, a podcast to a prospective client and you said, "Listen to my podcast," after the third or fourth episode, they get to know you.

I mean, they get this real authenticity, and now they're like, "Wow, y- will you have... Will you work with me?" Yeah, I'll, I'll work with you. Yeah, they ask you,

[00:34:18] Derek Notman: right? Exactly. Exactly.

[00:34:20] H. Adam Holt: That's the whole thing. So anyway, hopefully that answers your question then. All right, keep them coming. Keep them coming. We have- So-

about 20 minutes.

[00:34:27] Derek Notman: Can I... I'm gonna digress. I've got one that came in before the show.

[00:34:30] H. Adam Holt: Okay. Yeah.

[00:34:30] Derek Notman: And this one hit, like, kind of close to home for me. So the video that I did a few weeks ago was about some hard times I had early on as an advisor, and where I actually had to look at my baseball card collection on what I could sell to pay the bills.

Mm. So I had, I had someone, Tanner, uh, I don't know if he's with us today or not, but Tanner wrote in and asked, "How do you help your wipe, your wife keep the faith, uh, in your business during its darkest times?" Mm. And it, it really made me think, and I actually had a conversation with my wife, who Adam met today, by the way, uh, virtually.

[00:35:02] H. Adam Holt: Virtually.

[00:35:03] Derek Notman: Uh, virtually. Yeah. Um, but

[00:35:05] H. Adam Holt: she- I didn't believe she existed, really. I just- ... kept talking about this person.

[00:35:08] Derek Notman: I know. I talked about it. She's, she is around. Super woman. Um, so how did I get her to, like, keep the faith? 'Cause it was tough. I mean, let's face it, guys. Like, the first couple years are tough.

Um, especially you have no idea what you're doing when you come in, and I didn't. I had no idea what I was doing. And the biggest thing that my wife and I really kind of zeroed in when we talked about this was- Having a really open dialogue about what's going on in my business. So I would come home and say, "Hey, this is how many dials I made in my phone clinic.

This is how many appointments I scheduled. Here's what I did in this meeting." Like, and they didn't need to know, like, how I designed, like, a financial plan or a whole life policy or something like that. But, like, "Here's the work I'm doing for this client. Here's a little bit of their story. Here's how much revenue I think I'm gonna make off of this client."

And just always letting her know everything that was going on with my business, so there was less anxiety and less questions. Mm. It didn't mean that we didn't go through dark times. We did. But it en- enabled her to be on that journey with me instead of, like, looking in and always wondering, "Oh man, are we gonna be able to pay the bills this month?

What's going on? Is Derek actually working or is he just doing martini lunches? Like, what's going on here?" Um, so th- that's how, that's how I made it through that, and I'm not gonna sugarcoat it. The first couple years were really hard. Mm. Um, but communication, man. Anyways, so that- that's one to make sure I address.

That was a great question from Tanner.

[00:36:28] H. Adam Holt: That's a really good point. I think I made $11,000 my first year. That was my, that was my first year count. Wow. Thankfully, my mom let me live at home, but I had to pay her rent just to-

[00:36:38] Derek Notman: Ah. It was like- I love

[00:36:40] H. Adam Holt: your mom already ... "You need to go build, build some character."

[00:36:42] Derek Notman: Your mom

[00:36:43] H. Adam Holt: rocks. "Pay the rent." That makes more- "Go make more money. Go figure it out." Oh.

[00:36:46] Derek Notman: You know?

[00:36:47] H. Adam Holt: That's what you get when you get immigrant parents. Um, no, I'm just kidding. My mom wasn't an immigrant. Um, this is, you know, I see something from, from William Miller. This is, uh, this is an interesting... I think it's somewhat related because most of us, you know, we start out, we take the clients that we can get.

Um, and sometimes our clients don't have a lot of means, but they do need help, and we wanna help them because we're helping people. Uh, what do you recommend about revenue? "I work with a lot of millennials," he says, "and Gen Xers, but have an assets under management model. Charging 1% of $1,000 isn't profitable for the value they receive.

I've thought of a minimum fee that can be offset from the investment fee. What are your thoughts on this?" Well, you know, it's interesting, uh, for our practice- We tended to work with a very high-end marketplace, and of course, so we didn't have many of these clients that had this challenge. And of course, when, because we sold also insurances, we could make compensation on the insurance when they had to buy those.

If they didn't have assets, they needed insurance. If they didn't need insurance, they needed asset management. So we always figured out a way to monetize it and make more than our hourly rate. There are always times, uh, and I would say times are different. We have to s- we have to accept the fact that the AUM model is not gonna be the only model for charging in the future.

Mm-hmm. And we are a professional services, uh, industry. We should reasonably be charging for our time. I have long been a proponent, although I will tell you, within my broker-dealer, I was never able to execute this. If you asked me what I was gonna do today, I would charge a minimum fee based upon the number of hours in the early engagement that I thought was reasonable and fair, both what we call fair and appealing.

Maybe it's 500 bucks, maybe it's 1,000 bucks for the initial consultation. I do fact-finding, I kind of do a diagnosis. I understand what's going on. I know whether it's a good fit. If we wind up working together, I have an asset management fee and an hourly rate, okay? Or some kind of combination thereof.

I've long been the fan of, although the US has never been able to pull this off well, of saying, "Listen, the max my clients will ever pay is $10,000 a year," or whatever that number is. If I make compensation from, let's say, insurance products, I may not charge them my hourly rate. Like, but we all know that that doesn't really work in the current environment.

It works great in Europe. It works in other jurisdictions, and I think we'll be moving towards that as an or- as a kind of institution. But I... But either way, uh, I think fee transparency has to make sense for both the clients. Not only just showing them what we charge them for asset management, but also showing them that we actually need to get paid for the time and value we generate.

[00:39:28] Derek Notman: We provide a ton of value. We should get comp, but let's make it fair- Yeah ... and transparent, as you were saying. Great question, William. We appreciate it. And shout out to Allison, uh, about duos. Did you read her comment? Yeah. We're even better than peanut butter and jelly.

[00:39:42] H. Adam Holt: Yeah.

[00:39:43] Derek Notman: That's funny. I

[00:39:43] H. Adam Holt: wanna be jelly.

You can be peanut butter, by the way.

[00:39:46] Derek Notman: I have some peanut butter for lunch today, so that sounds good.

[00:39:49] H. Adam Holt: Well, I, my kid's allergic to peanut butter, so I have to be jelly-

[00:39:51] Derek Notman: Oh,

[00:39:52] H. Adam Holt: okay ... '

[00:39:55] Derek Notman: cause I can't go home. So you have to be peanut butter. Fine. Done. I just can't

[00:39:56] H. Adam Holt: ever call her. Thank you, Allison. Well, you're in California.

I'm not worried. No one's allowed in my house anyway.

[00:40:02] Derek Notman: Yeah. Right. All right. Okay. We're good then. All right. Let's see here. We've got, uh, I like this one from Chris. "Digital quiz funnels. I know Derek already stated he does his own campaigns, but I've heard other advisors on Kitsis basically say this is the future."

Hmm. Um, quizzes are, yeah, uh, qui- quizzes are a great tool. I've seen some of the solutions out there for them I, this, in my own personal opinion and experience, digital marketing, whether it's a post, a video, an e-book, a webinar, ex- a podcast, whatever, are an extension of you and your personal brand, right? So I struggle outsourcing that to things that don't feel natively like you and personally like you.

So could you use a digital quiz funnel? I think so. But unfortunately, they've been done a lot in other industries where they feel a bit clickbait-y, where like, uh, I don't know if that's a word, but I'm using it and I just made it up. But like you get in there and like you're doing this thing, but then, "Hey, by the way, you want your results?

You gotta give me your email address or your phone number or whatever." So I, I don't know. Chris, I think I would caution you on that. If you can find a really good vendor that has a great tool that feels natural and actually provides a ton of value without having to give a lot away, I think that's okay.

Um, but as I think the future of digital marketing in general is personalization. We just talked about this on the, an advisor website's, uh, webinar we did just like yesterday, and that is the big golden opportunity for all advisors right now is personalization. Coming through as who you are, working with a niche and sharing that because you know what?

No one can compete with you on that level because you are you and no one else is. Um, so it's a massive opportunity. I think that's really where it's headed. Any thoughts on this one, Adam?

[00:41:52] H. Adam Holt: No, you're the marketing expert here. I just pretend. But I'm authentic about it.

[00:41:57] Derek Notman: I don't know. I don't know if I'd call myself an expert.

I have experience.

[00:42:01] H. Adam Holt: Yeah. Yeah. Uh, yeah. I hear you.

[00:42:03] Derek Notman: It's a

[00:42:04] H. Adam Holt: hard thing. You're, I guess it's not self-proclaimed, but I'm proclaiming you as an expert 'cause you're just better than me at it. Um, I think- Well, we've got

[00:42:09] Derek Notman: that recorded live, baby.

[00:42:11] H. Adam Holt: It's true. I'm gonna delete this recording as soon as we- Nobody heard that.

Nobody's actually listening. Nobody heard it. Right? Um- Blacking out. You know, that's a great point 'cause actually, um, and I saw it in here. Here it is. So Kyle also asked, "Do we manage our own social medias personally or do we delegate this?" I, I think that's actually a, a good, a really good component. There, for me, there is aspects of this that I delegate.

Um, you might have seen popped up, TJ is actually, uh, the VP of digital marketing at Asset-Map, and he handles an enormous amount of content creation as well as, uh, lead funnels and nurturing and all kinds of stuff I had no idea about. But I would need someone to really support that level of enterprise driving hundreds of people in awareness and funnels and so forth.

Um, for a financial professional- I think there are some aspects that are worth delegating, especially website creation. Um, I, I think that 20 over 10 and, and Sam Russell does, just to kind of call out someone, uh, they're now at FMG Suite that acquired them, do a great job of, of creating compliance-friendly, uh, websites that are modern and cool.

And I know a lot of advisors running around with, uh, 2005 websites. Oh. That's the year, by the way, not how many websites they have. They have one website from 20, 2005. Um, maybe they upgraded in 2012. But the point is, is that- ... there's, there's, uh, there's some things you should not do, okay? And website is n- is one of them.

Um, but for social media, I, the authenticity that I get by controlling that is I think very impactful. The challenge, like everything, is keeping up with it. So a combination of, of either pre-scheduling posts or automating posts or having a combination of, let's say, uh, relevant media. We just started doing this, um, uh, an Alexa thing, which I'll do a shout-out for wealthvoice.ai.

You can tell them that you heard about us from them. Um, Emily Binder created a product where you can... We actually now, you can enable Alexa skills for Asset-Map because a, a, you know, "Alexa, el- tell me the latest update from Asset-Map," and there's a recorded voice that I record every single week, I gotta do every Monday, and it says what's going on.

And for those that really care, they can do that. You could do that for your own financial clients, right? Maybe you do a briefing on the market, or here's the newest things going on with interest rates to create credibility in two-minute snippets. I think those are really good uses of your time. Anything that enables your voice or your authenticity to, to ring, do it.

Anything that's not really needing you, delegate it.

[00:44:43] Derek Notman: 100%. There- It, it's a blend between the two, right? I have a team of digital marketing folks that help with the website, social media, running paid campaigns, all of that type of stuff, but we work together. I meet with them weekly. Um, and there are some things that I manage myself.

Uh, like my LinkedIn content, that's me, folks. That's all me.

[00:45:03] Announcer: Mm-hmm.

[00:45:03] Derek Notman: Um, because that's, that's the place I have found where I've been able to share my voice and connect with people. Uh, but I have a, a great team supporting me I've, I've been using for years, and they are worth every single penny. 'Cause I'll tell you that digital marketing, social media, all of it, is art and science and is a heck of a lot harder than it might appear.

So having good people to help you manage all that, and there's a lot of behind-the-scenes stuff that happens, uh, very, very important

[00:45:28] H. Adam Holt: I saw this, I don't know, I, this, and I apologize for, um, messing up your name, but if it's Eliseo, um, wrote, and he's written a couple things. I was trying to figure out what he was getting at, um, but I'll read this out loud for the- for those on the audio only.

It, it reads, "If wealth managers have multiple CPAs, estate planners, CFPs, et cetera, why don't they add nurses or geriatric care managers in house," in, on, in their staff I am assuming, "to address the longevity risk for their clients? There are a ton of nurses ready to train into the financial ins- industry, leaving bedside nursing.

Uh, they're one of the most trusted professionals 20 years in a row." And I, and I remember what, um, Joe Jordan had said on, on his podcast with us. Uh, he said that tr- that nurses were one of the most trusted professions. That's an interesting aspect because I think what it brings up, Derek, is one of the bigger pain points we've heard from advisors, which is how do you recruit?

How do you bring the next generation into your firm? And we were always huge proponents of trying to bring in people from different backgrounds into our business and attract them with the potential to earn, obviously, as well as have lifestyle flexibility-

[00:46:38] Derek Notman: Mm-hmm ...

[00:46:38] H. Adam Holt: and second careers. That's a really great idea to go after nurses.

[00:46:43] Derek Notman: I love it. You bring that on and have them be kind of like your long-term care expert.

[00:46:48] H. Adam Holt: Hmm.

[00:46:50] Derek Notman: I don't know, get them licensed to do that. Just an idea, but I mean, there's a lot of brilliant people out there, and if they understand the caregiving side and maybe they've worked in a nursing home, I mean, holy smokes, talk about a resource for your clients.

[00:47:02] H. Adam Holt: Yeah.

[00:47:03] Derek Notman: The wealth- Care

[00:47:03] H. Adam Holt: coordination ...

[00:47:03] Derek Notman: of knowledge there. Oh my gosh, it'd be huge. That'd be absolutely huge. So I, I think it's a brilliant idea- Yeah ... question to pose, and I would... I mean, talk, you want to differentiate?

[00:47:13] H. Adam Holt: That's interesting. That's a great idea. I'm gonna go tell... I, I'm, I'm taking that idea. Great.

[00:47:19] Derek Notman: Yeah.

[00:47:20] H. Adam Holt: I'm gonna call my bro- No, seriously, right? ... and say, "Hey listen, I know how to solve our problem." Well, one of the bigger challenges that we've had in, in the recruiting thing is getting women as well as diversity into our, into our space, right? Sounds like a wonderful way to do it. And I think it's because we keep looking in the same places.

And if you keep doing what you always do, you're gonna get what you always got. And so the point is, maybe we should open our eyes to skills and communities that typically haven't been, been feeders for financial advice. So I think, I think you just t- I think you just actually- You nailed

[00:47:51] Derek Notman: it. Yeah

[00:47:51] H. Adam Holt: delivered something really big to everybody on this call who's thinking about the next generation of services and succession, and who better to put into your firm than somebody who understands how to take care of somebody- It's amazing ... at their most intimate level. That is the purpose of our profession, right?

So.

[00:48:10] Derek Notman: 100%, right?

[00:48:11] H. Adam Holt: Hats off.

[00:48:12] Derek Notman: Yeah. Hats off, man. That was a wonderful question.

[00:48:14] H. Adam Holt: Well said. Well asked. Um-

[00:48:16] Derek Notman: I like this one here. I'm gonna go into this one now. Yeah Tim Tocco. Hopefully I said that correct. Uh, that's a cool name. Uh, what did you guys do in the early years or transitional years to supplement your income?

So- Hmm ... I dug out basements by hand. It was awful. I would do this stuff. I was an advisor by day and night, and then either when I got home after that or all weekend, I would literally be digging out basements with five-gallon buckets for cash and doing other, like, home remodeling type of stuff just so we could pay the bills.

Um, I didn't do that for any longer than I had to, but that's one of the things- Mm-hmm ... that I did. How about you, Adam? Did you do anything on the side?

[00:48:59] H. Adam Holt: Uh, yeah, I ate ramen.

[00:49:03] Derek Notman: Yeah, ramen.

[00:49:03] H. Adam Holt: Ramen was 25 cents a, a packet by then, back then. You know, I lived at home, as I said that. Um, and I wasn't married. I didn't have a family yet, so I had the, I had the luxury of feeding a single mouth and not paying a mortgage.

Um, my rent was thankfully low at 250 bucks a month. It was something. As my mom said, it was nothing. Um, but by the time I was 30, you know, I had already bought a house. Um, uh, so I had, I did have an acceleration in my career. Um, and, and it was because I got, I got the right mentors, uh, relatively early. By my fifth year, I really was, I was starting to sing.

Um, and so... And that's why I say when I catapulted those years. That being said, I've always kind of approached this business very frugally. Um, some people call that now, uh, what's it called? Capital efficiency. Uh, basically means you're cheap. Um, you know how to manage money, know how, know how to not overspend.

Like, I build all my own furniture. How, how about that? I don't spend money on furniture. Um, I would say I make my own clothes, but that would... Well, maybe that looks like I make my own clothes. But, uh, I did buy a sewing machine, and I use it. My kid doesn't use it. That's funny. So I'm a handy person, too, like Derek.

I like to build stuff. Um, but we have some great stories. By the way, write them in the chat if you have stories you want to just share. Yeah. Yeah. Come on. You know, ask me your questions. We'd all love to, uh, make it a community, right?

[00:50:21] Derek Notman: Um, here's a big one. Uh, w- this one's... We'll go through this. Oh, boy. So Isaac, like, first, like, thank you, my man.

Okay. Like, talk about, like, investing in your business and, and supporting us. Adam and I really, really appreciate everything here, so thank you. Um, so that's great. I'm glad that, you know, you, like, what we say resonates. And clients all over the country. Okay. So I had that when I went, you know, when I was in the process of going remote.

I did have clients spread out a little bit already. Uh, you're very tech-savvy. Perfect, but you get bogged down in operations. Mm-hmm. I hear that. I used... I mean, Adam, I, you both and I felt that pain.

[00:50:56] H. Adam Holt: Yeah.

[00:50:57] Derek Notman: Um, I feel efficient but not effective. I'm nervous about presenting this transition to virtual before I have a solid digital foundation.

So I think what you need to do, Isaac, is put that infrastructure in place. I'm gonna pull this down just 'cause I can't see myself or Adam. Although I see Adam all the time anyways, but, um,

[00:51:15] H. Adam Holt: Whoa, whoa, sorry.

[00:51:16] Derek Notman: Hey, oh, he's

[00:51:17] H. Adam Holt: sleeping again. Are we, are we still doing this?

[00:51:20] Derek Notman: Hello. Um, so that's a great- I was thinking about a

[00:51:23] H. Adam Holt: question

[00:51:24] Derek Notman: great question, Isaac. So I think it is an infrastructure thing because once you have inf- infrastructure, physical and digital, and you know how to use it, right? Adam mentioned this earlier, don't just buy tech and then not do the demo and get comfortable with it. If you're uncomfortable doing something virtually, whether it's presenting a plan or just having a virtual meeting or whatever, then your clients are gonna be even more uncomfortable 'cause they're gonna sense you're uncomfortable.

So for me, what I did initially is, one, I got really comfortable with all the tech and the infrastructure to make sure I looked good, sounded good, knew how to use the tech. But then I, I tested it with my family-

[00:51:58] H. Adam Holt: Mm ...

[00:51:58] Derek Notman: and then my best clients, people that I had really strong relationships with first. Dialed everything in, got comfortable, and then was able to go communicate in, you know, in a broader sense to all of my clients.

Also, you don't just have to even really announce it. You don't have to say, "Hey, by the way, I'm going virtual tomorrow." Um, it's all over after that, right? Like, you just do it, and it's in your communication with people and how you are offering to schedule virtual review meetings and things of that nature.

Also, find some staff to help you manage some of these things. Mm-hmm. Learn the basics. Get un- you know, understand how the stuff works, but then get a VA, get some digital marketing people, and you can hire a lot of these people at a fraction of the cost of a full-time person initially. So do that. Outsource that stuff like Adam said, and then jump into the things that you're really good at.

I hope that helps. Adam, you wanna add anything to that?

[00:52:49] H. Adam Holt: Here's the thing. The pandemic forced most of us to just adapt fast, right? If you weren't doing virtual meetings- Yeah ... you had to just jump into it. What I think a lot of advisors hopefully realized is that what they were presenting in their rooms that was typically 20, 30, 50 pages was ineffective in a virtual environment, right?

Because you, you don't, you keep, you're gonna show all these PDFs on the screen. Remember, our clients, I, I, I think, I think we are all gonna be pressed to create higher intimacy and higher production value at the same time using virtual tools. Think about this environment right now. What, what do we do? We are literally...

It looks like CNN on my screen. I don't know about you, but th- this is insane. Do you know that Derek and I are running this entirely ourselves? No help. No help at all. No staff. No. We learned it last night, okay? On

[00:53:40] Derek Notman: YouTube. Right.

[00:53:40] H. Adam Holt: You have to forgive yourself that your clients are expecting, like, the CNN broadcast day one.

But what I tell you they're not ex- not looking forward to is for you to show them 800 pages on a screen that they can barely read. Oh my gosh. Okay? What you have to do is you have to re- you have to lower your expectations for what the amount of information you can actually communicate in a s- in a virtual meeting, and by thereby doing, you probably could cut half your tech.

You're not gonna need it in the presentation world anymore. What they're looking for is to, can I connect with you, and do you really understand my pain point? And now can you communicate it back to me that you have a plan of action that makes sense, and we can say, "Yes, please go do it"? There you go. That actually requires us to thin down our tech, or at least our presentation to its most relevant purpose, jettison the junk we're not using, okay?

Clients don't care, by the way. You care. The clients don't actually care. And then really focus on how do you connect with people over a screen sharing environment. How do you ask the best questions? How do you- Yeah ... bring ideas and concepts to the table? How do you introduce another professional and say, say, "Listen, I brought this CPA 'cause I think I see some tax problems.

Let's talk about it. Here's how we're gonna add value today." So I think the real key for advisors as we kind of wrap, wrap up here is we as advisors have to figure out ways to bring more value to the table, even outside of the, the, the schema that we've always thought. It's not just always about investment decisions.

It's not always about insurance division decisions or annuity. It should be about banking strategy. It should be about tax. It should be about multi-generational approach. It should be how do I help your parents transition this wealth and think about that just because I'm on your team? And so I think what y- what we're all gonna see is this move towards kind of really holistic advocacy, where we're acting in the best interest of our clients even without them asking.

That means proactive. And so I, I think we, we run the risk, given there's so much technology out there, of becoming dependent on the newest, coolest tech. The client is looking for how are you gonna help me make good decisions?

[00:55:43] Derek Notman: Am I gonna be okay?

[00:55:45] H. Adam Holt: Am I okay?

[00:55:46] Derek Notman: Yep, exactly. And, and to Evans' real quick question to piggyback on this, I, there's, there's just one answer: Asset-Map.

That's it.

[00:55:56] H. Adam Holt: That's, that's our answer. I mean-

[00:55:58] Derek Notman: Right? I mean- ... it's worked for us ... I mean, there are other tools out there of course, but I, I'm an Asset-Map user. I love it. My clients love it. But, so Evan, that is a way to do it. You don't need to show a ton of stuff. Y- it's your job- Yeah ... to condense and simplify the complex into a- Mm

very simple, digestible content. Um, if you haven't checked out Asset-Map, please do.

[00:56:18] H. Adam Holt: I think we're out of time, my friend.

[00:56:20] Derek Notman: We are. I mean, if, if people are cool, do you guys wanna go a few minutes longer? Adam, can you go a few minutes longer?

[00:56:25] H. Adam Holt: I'm, I'm back to back all day. I, I mean, I got- ... I got meetings. I mean, I can...

W- we'll do, we'll do, we'll do two more questions. How about that?

[00:56:32] Derek Notman: Two more questions, then we'll wrap it up. I like it. All right, cool. Uh, what do you want? Which one do you wanna do here? We got a couple.

[00:56:37] H. Adam Holt: I don't know. I thought you had an idea.

[00:56:38] Derek Notman: Do you know Ma- do you know Mateo? You wanna do his- I do ... question here?

[00:56:42] H. Adam Holt: Oh, yeah.

[00:56:43] Derek Notman: Oh, you just...

[00:56:43] H. Adam Holt: Whoops.

[00:56:43] Derek Notman: There we

[00:56:43] H. Adam Holt: go. I got rid of it. Sorry, I didn't know you were gonna say it. So I do know Mateo. Um, "How valuable is something like MDRT to join for finding mentors and quality practice management business management?" Okay. "I keep deciding not to join because I'm not sure of the value."

Look, I, I've been a life member of MDRT for now, I don't know, however many years, 15, 16, 17 years. I found it incredibly valuable when I went and when I showed up, when I listened, when I was open. The reality is, is that when you're open for mentorship, you'd be surprised how much of it shows up. Um, MDRT happens to be really strong around the whole person and, uh, and you as a practice manager.

Um, but what I think I mean more so as getting a mentor is getting a hands-on mentor that you meet with on a periodic basis, and they're really giving you, uh, the ability to, to grow personally. If you, if you can't actually work with a mentor, which I think is the super ideal, you see them all the time, you see how they act in meetings, you get their language, you get their approach, you see how they handle their business, how they handle really tough times.

Do they freak out or do they, or they get stronger, right? How do they handle their employees when they do good things and when they don't do good things? How do you learn from that? I think that's, that takes being totally immersed to really get all the value of that. So if it takes merging your practice or, or shadowing somebody for a year, I can't say.

I think it's worth it if you really respect them and you wanna be more like them.

[00:58:04] Derek Notman: 100% agree. I would add, make sure that there's definitely a personality fit in that you are not just finding any mentor, but find the right mentor.

[00:58:12] H. Adam Holt: Mm.

[00:58:13] Derek Notman: I initially looked for any mentor, and I found a couple of seasoned advisors that I thought were great, and it ended up being disasters.

Um, they're the... You know, like, mentors should not get a percentage of every case you write, let's put it that way. Okay? Um, you know, then that's, that's jaded. So anyways. Um,

[00:58:32] H. Adam Holt: yeah. That's called business development. Business development. Yeah. All right, what else we got?

[00:58:37] Derek Notman: Well, I think we've just got one here. We can wrap up with this one if we want.

I know it's not, like, groundbreaking, but it's a good tactical question. Um, combination of Zoom bookings or Webex bookings. I think it really just depends on what you're best s- comfortable using, right? I mean, there's a lot of tools. Part of it will depend, uh, what's your compliance department approve, right?

'Cause they do have different ones that are sometimes approved versus others. Mm-hmm. And then it's also just, like, what are the features are you looking for? What are you most comfortable using? Um, I've never really liked the Webex one personally. I love the Zoom ones. I also used, uh, Google Hangout, or not a Hang- is it Google Hangouts?

Google Meets, whatever. I think

[00:59:15] H. Adam Holt: so, yeah. Mm-hmm.

[00:59:16] Derek Notman: Those are great. Um, you know, 'cause what you wanna do is make it as easy as possible-

[00:59:20] H. Adam Holt: Yeah ...

[00:59:21] Derek Notman: for the consumer to get in, for your client to get in and have a meeting. Yeah. It doesn't matter how smart you are. If they can't click Join Meeting, d- you know, whatever, it doesn't matter.

So that would be- Mm-hmm ... my, my two cents on that one.

[00:59:34] H. Adam Holt: I'm with you, man. I, if it, if that's a question about Webex or Zoom, Zoom is much more prolific than Webex because- Exactly ... Webex requires certain plugins. Um, if this is about, uh, about calendar scheduling, I don't think we should... Nobody should be absent a automated calendar scheduling that has your Zoom meetings or whatever automatically pre-built into them.

That is table stakes today. If you don't know what I'm talking about, um, you gotta, you know, go to Calendly or ScheduleOnce or HubSpot or any of these tools that have an automatic scheduler. People should be able to schedule with you, um, with ease. Again, the whole mantra today is it's gotta be easy, otherwise people move on, right?

If you're not, if you're too difficult to work with, you can be more expensive, but don't be difficult. Don't be difficult.

[01:00:25] Derek Notman: Yeah. Right? Right. That's,

[01:00:26] H. Adam Holt: that's brilliant. I love it. I'm one and done for that one. Um, I see a comment about crypto. I kinda like, I feel like I have to say it, right? David asks, "What's your say about cryptocurrencies?

Are they here for the long haul?" I think so. I mean- They've been

[01:00:42] Derek Notman: around for a while. In what shape or form?

[01:00:46] H. Adam Holt: Well- Are they investable? Are you asking that? I don't think we can give investment guidance on this podcast. No. Um, best, but just, but least to say that, that, uh, yeah, that market is too big to disappear.

Um, so I, I think in some fashion there are major companies being built now on what's learned from the crypto exchanges from-

[01:01:06] Derek Notman: Oh ...

[01:01:06] H. Adam Holt: from the, from the contracts, uh, from the, um, uh... Of course, you're getting me into the technical side now.

[01:01:12] Derek Notman: Yeah, I don't even know. Um- It, it's d- definitely becoming more prolific though, wouldn't you say?

[01:01:16] H. Adam Holt: Yeah. Immutable records and contracts, uh, these digital contracts are here to say NFTs will be a thing. Digital- Yep ... cryptocurrencies will be a thing. Um, will continue to be a thing, by the way. I, I do not think it's going away, and I wouldn't discount its place in people's portfolio given they have the right risk profile and of course understand the implications of having a non-security security.

Like, it's there's the security of what? Nothing. So.

[01:01:40] Derek Notman: Yeah. Right. That's a good disclaimer. Thank you.

[01:01:41] H. Adam Holt: But it's still, you know, like, art, art is still like canvas with some, you know, oils on it. Like- Yeah.

[01:01:46] Derek Notman: You can touch it, right? Yeah. Some-

[01:01:48] H. Adam Holt: Yeah, but that's about it. It doesn't do anything for you. You can't eat it.

I mean, so clearly securities, uh- You

[01:01:53] Derek Notman: can't eat art.

[01:01:55] H. Adam Holt: You can eat art.

[01:01:55] Derek Notman: Actually, yes you can. You could. Your soul can consume. There are some, there's some modern, there's some art that is food. Well, macaroni art. Like it's the food. Yeah, you could eat that. Come on. You can't cook the macaroni. My kid brings that stuff home.

Yeah, okay. You don't eat it with the paint on it, right? Oh, wait a minute, that might explain something to everybody. That could be it, my man. Maybe- You're eating the art ... now

you're starting to understand.

[01:02:15] H. Adam Holt: California. All right.

[01:02:17] Derek Notman: Oh, man.

[01:02:17] H. Adam Holt: Well, listen, thank you, Derek. And of course thank you to all our friends, uh, and community that showed up for us. We're gonna turn this into a podcast just to see if it will work. Um, and, uh, we really appreciate everybody out there. Of course, please, uh, please tell your friends about the Rethink podcast and let them, uh, participate, and hopefully they'll learn something here or there, or at least laugh at us, um, and, uh, burn some time when they're commuting.

Um, but we do appreciate it. And so thank you, my friend, for spending the time. Likewise, Adam. Always a pleasure.

[01:02:43] Derek Notman: Great seeing you, buddy, and thanks to everyone for joining us today. Uh, sending positive vibes your way, guys. We'll see ya.

[01:02:48] H. Adam Holt: Cheers, everyone.

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