EP 47 | John Kennedy and Matthew Marcoux on Orchestrating the Ensemble Practice

David DeCelle  9:37  

So when you guys joined forces, obviously, if you were just continuing to do the same thing that you were doing at the other firm, basically you’d just have things under one rep code, but life is the same and your actions are the same. But you started to realize that you did have different skill sets. So John, I'll kick this over to you. What is your role in the firm compared to Matt's role in the firm? And why do you think that that works, or has been working, I should say, so well?

 

John 10:07  

Well, we've certainly identified a number of core processes that operate the lion's share of our business; 80% plus of what we do can be brought down and distilled into six core processes, which I'll talk about later. I think marketing is a big element to what I do for the company. I, first of all, enjoy that. David, through working with you, and yes, as much as you don't want us to give you credit, it’s going to happen here and there throughout this podcast. But through working with you, I don't think I had ever shot a video to either communicate directly with a client or for social media, no less. Now here we are doing numerous videos a week, sending client one-on-one videos. I mean, it's just something that we're so assimilated to, and I enjoy doing that. I enjoy brainstorming, coming up with the creative content we're going to do in communicating our message. So I guess I would say marketing client experience is really probably one of the main areas that I focus on. Matt, you're focused more operationally. Do you want to talk a little bit about that?

 

Matt  11:06  

Yeah, operationally, it's a big thing. I think one of the things to tack on is as financial advisors, first thing we have to think about is we're not financial advisors first. We're business owners. Without the business, everything else falls apart. So I really think part of my role is making sure that we are focused on being a profitable business, and that's incredibly important. The fact that we're able to divide these roles up, that John necessarily doesn't have to worry about that part of it, I can focus on that side of it. So, the inner workings of our business, that integrator role for us is absolutely critical. I gravitate towards taxes. So that's an area that John just doesn't have; he knows about it, he's a certified financial planner, he's gonna be able to talk to anyone about it. He doesn't enjoy that, though. And that's something I happen to have an interest in. So again, allowing us to split these off and be able to tackle one thing over the other is, for us, incredibly important.

 

John  11:57  

We did two things early on that were definitely helpful. We took what's called an enneagram test, which seems to be all the rage these days for personality assessments. And then we did the Model FA personality assessment. So the enneagram test we found, surprisingly, we both scored really, similarly. We were surprised by that; I think we were both challengers and high achievers, if I'm not mistaken, if you recall, Matt. Where I think the Model FA personality test helped us out was really identifying — okay, so we get our personality traits and we get that we're a little similar in some of those ways — but more so identifying what do we enjoy within our business? How do we enjoy working with our clients? So I'll paraphrase some of that personality test. But Matt, much more The Guardian type advisor, who loves to be in meetings and working with clients; and not that I don't, but I scored a little bit higher as more of The Visionary. Where's the company going to be in ten years, and how are we going to grow? I think those are really helpful if someone were to be considering a partnership, or collaborating in this ensemble approach like we're talking about, is understanding the other person. Because even as much as we felt like we knew about each other, we took this enneagram test, and we're like, oh, that's an interesting finding.

 

David DeCelle  13:15  

What were some of the challenges that you guys experienced after you broke off from the other firm, starting the CandorPath, in terms of working with one another? Because every time I interact with you guys, it seems like it's super synergistic and it's going super smooth. But obviously, everyone has their behind the scenes challenges that they experience. I mean, you guys work together, I think you live on the same street. So you guys are spending a lot of time together.

 

Matt  13:44  

We see a lot of each other. I often joke, I have more bank accounts with john than I do with my wife. It’s the truth. I think we have like nine bank accounts together, right? Running a business of multiple lines just requires that. So, it's a good point.

 

David DeCelle  13:55  

So what have some of those challenges been like, Matt?

 

Matt  13:58  

I think a lot of it is what I talked about a moment ago. Back being a silo, we had the option to do things differently. I took notes differently than John took notes, I used the CRM differently than John, my investments were different than John's, and there was no right or wrong. But I think some of the challenge is we had to conform, and I had to conform and so did John a little bit. So we had to take notes the exact same way, we had to use the same CRM, we had to have the same philosophy when we're dealing with a client. Again, if we're going to be an ensemble, and we're going to insert ourselves into these client relationships, I can't come at it from a different angle than John. I can't have a different theory about financial planning than John does. So it wasn't necessarily a challenge, but I needed to make changes in my life, and John did as well. Then besides that was just starting a business, which as anyone who's listening knows, there's challenges there. So, you have a finite amount of capital, you have an unlimited amount of potential, and how do you balance the two of those; and we really heavily relied on technology. I think the first thing we did is we got a coach. That was almost like step one was recognizing we don't know everything; we think we do, but we don't. And so, having someone who's a third party, can hold us accountable, help us in the areas that we don't have much experience in. So we knew enough to know, we don't know everything, and we needed a coach. That helped a lot of it. Then like I said, technology was a biggie, I talked to someone, David, you sent over to me as a guy who was starting his business, and it was a solo guy. He is answering phones, he's booking meetings, he's running a financial planning practice, and oh, by the way, he's also paying the bills. And I said, listen, you’ve got to rely on technology. Have a virtual receptionist, use a calendar program to schedule your meetings, have a virtual assistant. When you have just got so much work, you’ve got to hand it off to somebody. Sso some of those challenges for us, we learned the hard way, and some we learned the easy way, by hiring a coach who could say to us, hey, guys do this.

 

John  15:58  

I was actually going to go a different direction with that, but you do bring up just a good point in general. So back to the whole processes thing, we wanted to be able to have it so that if I'm on vacation, if I'm sick, if I'm down with an illness, Lord knows what — if I'm not available, or vice versa, we can plug into that circumstance and talk to the client, as if we were that other person. So making sure that we were doing things exactly the same way as far as how we were taking notes, how we were tracking things for the client. We understand that from a client's perspective, they might view Matt or myself as the lead relationship that represents CandorPath, and that's their contact point. That's who they meet with. That's who gives them financial advice. But we've spent the better part of three years communicating this messaging of teamwork, so that fast forward to today, clients are actually quite comfortable having a conversation with me in place of Matt, if he's not available. Obviously, we can bounce all over the place with this, but we talked about client experience. We think communication is one of the biggest areas that we want to deliver on, and so it is a little stressful when you're on your own. We all know in this industry, there's no such thing as an unplugged vacation, but not being able to get away for a little bit and have that time to check out is not healthy either. So we've tried to create a system where we can do that together and really work together. And that only happened through forcing ourselves, give and take. Okay, I see how Matt does this, this is a non negotiable for how he likes to do things, I'm going to adopt that philosophy of how I do note taking. Or he sees how I do something, and we just kind of brought that together and now we do it the same way. As we scale, at some point if we bring on another advisor, as we're growing our company, we want to be able to replicate that same process as well; because we believe we do financial planning in a unique way. And in a way, that's a really great deliverable and helpful for the client. So that type of stuff. I didn't think of it that way,Matt; I was gonna go a different direction about client segmentation. But that's a good thought, as far as probably our biggest challenge in the last three years is saying we're going to be an ensemble, and then executing it.

 

Matt 18:07  

Actually doing it. I think to piggyback on yours is we don't both have the same expertise and skill sets. So again, a client is very comfortable with coming to me for a tax question that you might be the lead advisor for. We had to train our clients to do that, because that's not common. You don't want to feel like they're being handed off to somebody and they're not in our situation. We're two equals who just have different skill sets.

 

David DeCelle  18:28  

You brought a point that I want to hit on. I wasn't planning on bringing it up, but I feel like there's a number of folks who are kind of in this predicament where they're looking to scale their business; may or may not have the financial resources to do so in the appropriate way. And I know that you guys had a bridge to get you from where you were to where you are now, specifically as it relates to working with a virtual assistant. John, can you hit on a little bit what that virtual assistant was doing for you? And then why, ultimately, it made sense to actually hire an additional teammate, as we sit here today?

 

John  19:08  

At the time, we just recognized we needed help, we needed to outsource certain internal tasks. We needed help even with simple things like phone answering. How disruptive is it if you're the be all end all, and the office line directs straight to you and you're trying to work on a client case? And then you get a call from somebody else about a completely different topic. Those things are challenging. We went through a couple different avenues with a virtual assistant. I would say the one that was probably most successful was Belay. I mean, we sound like we're promoting them.

 

Matt 19:41  

Use offer code CandorPath 18 and you can get a 10% discount.

 

[laughter]

 

John  19:45  

We should have talked to them about this beforehand. No, so that was a great relationship. We worked with them for over a year before we hired our first full time in-house position. It was a great way to bridge the gap. Yes, on an hourly rate basis, it's a higher rate, but we just had to continually do the math. David was, we're giving you way too many props here today, but David was instrumental in helping us identify. We basically created this list of things that we love and are good at, and on the opposing side was things that we hate and are not good at.

 

David DeCelle  20:19  

Yep. So energy audit; it’s your zone of genius, your zone of excellence, your zone of competence, and your zone of incompetence. Basically anything that is in your zone of competence or incompetence should either be automated, delegated, or deleted. Ultimately, over time, you should only be spending your time in your zone of genius. The interesting thing is that certain people's zone of geniuses are your zone of incompetences. So then you kind of play with those puzzle pieces and bring those together. Because there's people who get energy from the things that actually drain your energy, and by finding those folks, whether it be in a fractional capacity, like when you guys started, to now in a full time capacity, that's when you can just run faster together; because everything's taken care of, and no one's leaving their day with less energy than when they started, because everything that they're doing is actually giving them energy throughout the day.

 

John  21:20  

Yeah, that's great. And obviously, an energy audit is probably — like in our world, many people that are financial services, think more in the line of numbers — but the energy audit was really helpful. And of course, like many others probably, we knew our hourly rate, we knew what we wanted to target per relationship. So we were able to do the math and say, okay, well, if we can outsource these identified tasks that we're not good at and we don't enjoy, and free up our time, at the hourly rate we want to be working at or that we feel like we deserve. Now we can have this role. That's probably the hardest part; I talked to people about a virtual assistant a lot. They said, oh, it's just so expensive, hourly. I’m like, right, but think about the freedom that that can give you. So when you're in that place where you don't feel comfortable hiring a full time position for one reason or another, it is a great bridge; a great bridge. 

 

Matt  22:11  

And also, assuming you're a new business owner, assuming that you have a finite amount of capital, yes, hourly rate is high, but you're not paying benefits. You could turn that off in 30 days time. You don't have that employee-employer relationship, which, as a small business owner, makes you completely flexible. And yes, you're not giving this person the keys to the kingdom, right? They're not running the business, but again, as John said, offloading those tasks that drain you, oftentimes, if you look at those tasks, there are things that it's things anyone can do. That's why it is draining you; it doesn't require your specialty to do those things. And so for us, it was a no brainer to do it. It's not a long term solution, I don't think. For us, it was a one year; gave us one year to build capital; it gave us one year to figure out what do we like and what do we not like; then it opened up the door for our first hire when we knew exactly what we were looking for. When that person came along, which Megan came along, she was the one for us and we knew, hey, we can now terminate the virtual assistant program and bring that internal. We still outsource a number of things, but for us now we have an incredible team member who we'd basically vetted for a year and knew exactly what we needed when that person came along.

 

John  23:23  

I think that the greatest tangible benefit of doing all that was there was a disproportionate increase in client satisfaction and communication, which we quantified by doing these interactive client surveys with clients. But to be able for somebody to call in, even if we were busy, they got a warm, friendly voice  on the other line. They talked to somebody that cared about their concerns, that made sure that we got the message or got back to them, or they were able to handle an internal task so that the task got done faster than we could have done it because our checklist for the day was overwhelming. That's the greatest thing I noticed. Wouldn’t you say, Matt? Just as far as feedback we've gotten from clients is how they viewed us on our communication.

 

David DeCelle  24:07  

I think too, when people struggle with frankly the cost of anything that's gonna give them leverage is not necessarily knowing what they're going to do with that freed up time, and afraid that they may just use that to take a breather, as opposed to doing more marketing and doing more business development. But marketing and business development, quite frankly, are catchall phrases, and you can be doing so many different activities during that freed up time that if you don't know exactly what it is that you're going to be doing, you're going to view hiring someone as a cost more so than an investment to leverage your time. So I think that in order to comfortably hire someone, regardless of the cost, you need to really know what it is that you want to do with that freed up time so that you're actually maximizing the new time that you've just found.

 

Matt  24:58  

I remember early on with you, you were talking as we were in our coaching sessions, and you're like, okay, you're going to free up your time, so that you can go do this. And what's so unique about our relationship with you, David, is that we both have families. Right now you're still in the process of looking for your one and building a family, but let's call it what it is. You're a single dude living in Florida in Tampa.

 

David DeCelle  25:18  

It’s a good life, baby.

 

Matt  25:19  

I know. So you came from it as, okay, you freed up time, now go work hard. John and I both said, we freed up time, we want to spend time with our families and actually do less. And that's exactly what we did. 

 

John

What a contrarian.

 

Matt

It wasn't a right or wrong, but your perspective was, you freed up time —

 

David DeCelle  25:34  

Just so everyone knows, I pushed back on this quite a bit.

 

Matt  25:38  

You did. You're like, oh, my gosh, you freed up time so now you can shoot all this content videos. And we're like, yeah, we freed up this time, we're gonna go hang with a family and take more vacations. And that's what was important to us, but it was so fun to have that conversation because it is so easy to become complacent. You hold us very accountable to making sure that that doesn't happen, but we also had some non-negotiables that we were like, alright, we really value that work/life balance. 

 

John  26:02  

It wasn't all or nothing, either. That's not fair to say.

 

David DeCelle  26:04  

I was gonna say, let's compromise and say that you guys have still obviously grown, you're still hanging out with your family. So you're still doing the things, you're just in a position to where you can be much smarter with your time; and the things that you normally would be doing early in the morning or late at night or on the weekends, are now taken care of by Megan and some of the other resources that you have.

 

John  26:30  

Yeah, exactly. I think one of the biggest things that we were able to do besides spend more time with family. Year one and two were very growth driven. I mean, I can't imagine we’re that different than other advisors where it's all about — sales can be a dirty word — but it's about sales, cultivating relationships, grow, grow, grow, you got to grow. And I would say in year one and two, that's really what allowed us the freed up time to continue focusing on growth. And in year three, we got to a point where, I'm not saying we just ballooned and grew, I'm not trying to be overconfident about that, but what I'm getting at is, we got to a point where we realized that growth that we were achieving was unsustainable. So, adding more revenue for the sake of adding revenue versus adding an ideal client relationship, and making sure that it's a good fit both financially, but also just personally; they're going to be somebody you want to work with. So we spent a lot of time this past year working on operating like a true business versus just a practice; like, oh, we have a financial planning practice here. People say, oh, we have a practice. That's true, but we really switched gears into saying, okay, let's be more of a business, let's run this more like a business. And that's where Traction by Gina Wickman came in which we've talked with you a lot about, David. Yeah.

 

Patrick Brewer  27:52  

Hey, Model FAs, I know you're enjoying this conversation, but I wanted to take a quick break to talk to you about the Model FA Accelerator. This is a unique collaboration between us and you, where we help you build a financial advising practice that you can be proud of. We focus on the foundational concepts around how to pick a niche or a specialization, how to price your services, how to construct an offer that people are going to buy, and then how to market it and sell it in a way that will get people to sign on the dotted line and become clients of your firm; all while giving you the information to scale, and set up workflows and operational processes that will allow you to reclaim your time and build a practice that doesn't run you. So if you'd like to hear more about that, go to www.ModelFA.com/accelerator or www.ModelFA.com. Hover over Work With Us and click on Accelerator, and hope to see in the program.

 

David DeCelle  28:29  

I want to transition slightly. Your client communication and client experience has changed drastically. I think you guys have always worked hard to deliver a good experience and to be able to communicate with clients, but the way in which you've done that has changed over the last two or three years or so, leveraging more video and some other newer and cool means where people can actually hear from you on a daily basis. So John, I know that you've been heading up a lot of that stuff on the front end as it relates to content creation and things like that. I want to know what it is that you're doing exactly, and couple that with the feedback that you're getting from clients and prospects. Matt and I will jump in along the way.

 

John  29:34  

Sure, early on when we started this all, I think the idea was grow and add clients; but it quickly shifted to realizing, oh, wow, using social media as a means for communication to reach our existing clients is really what we're trying to do. Paraphrase something that Matt said along the way, and he said it numerous times when we have discussions internally about stuff like this, but it's more expensive to gain a new client than it is to retain an existing client. And as we tried to come up with ways to think about how to improve client experience, we said, well, let's try to be everywhere our clients are. So if they're on LinkedIn, if they're on Instagram, if they're on Facebook, Twitter, they use their their daily Alexa skill to get news briefings, flash briefings from Alexa, we wanted to be there and be able to communicate; and so much so in the way now, I think two things happen. So, obviously, a lot of our clients are on Facebook. I think that's not news that an older demographic, like a retiree demographic, they all, everyone has a Facebook account in that age group; and so, we've connected with a lot of our clients personally, we invite them to our CandorPath Financial Facebook page. That's where we have a lot of stuff; whether it's an audio snippet, a video of one of us talking, it could be timely, relevant market updates, or it could just simply be financial discipline and retirement talk. But they feel like they hear from us more than an actual personal reach out, so we're able to leverage using Facebook, as an example, as a megaphone to reach our clients, stay in front of them, and communicate our message. Not everybody does things the same way. Obviously, we have an email campaign just like everybody else, but not everybody checks their email. We genuinely have some clients get their updates from us from Facebook, and they've told us that and we're totally okay with that, because that's where they like to hear from us. So what was interesting is just how much connectivity we were having with clients through that. 

 

Matt  31:38  

It was just funny now, with Facebook and all the metrics, you can see that our tax update video is the least amount of views. John brought his daughter into our office yesterday, and they took just cute pictures. He has a beautiful young daughter, Ella is just so adorable. So they took pictures. I mean, that's what our clients actually care about seeing. We'll put the tax video out and the market update video, no one — that's boring to us, okay, and we actually like this. Our clients love the personal stuff. Again, if we're connecting deep with our clients, they’re friends and they’re family to us; we genuinely enjoy them. We have 170 clients, and I can confidently say that every single one of those 170, I would go have dinner with tomorrow. I would enjoy hanging out with them. So they want to see what we're like not in the business environment of being their financial advisor. They love that stuff. I think that's where, as John's point was, our megaphone is not just about finance. It's about, hey, we're real people, and here's what our life looks like as well.

 

John  32:39  

That's a great point. I mean, every client asked, like, hey, how's your family doing? How's Ella and Hudson? The conversation comes up, and so now they see it. They get to follow along, whether it's subconscious or passive or whatever, they get to see some of these updates. And you're right, Matt, they do love it. I think the other element to this is, going back to a prospect that might call us or reach out, as David has said before, what's the first thing you do when you're going to research a company you're going to do work with or person you're going to work with? You socially stalk them, and that happens, so we realize that. I mean, when we first started doing videos, man, you guys know, we’d get two likes, and that was Matt's mom and my mom. That's grown a little bit. It's still not like we're getting thousands of hits on videos and thousands of likes on videos. 

 

David DeCelle

Even your wives didn't like it. They're like, what are these guys doing? Look at them playing business over there.

 

John  33:30  

Yeah, exactly. But what's ended up happening, where this has evolved is we'll have an initial conversation with somebody, they'll schedule through Calendly, they'll book an intro call. And it took us a while to truly connect the dots, but the conversations accelerated faster. The trust seemingly developed quicker. We got deeper to the heart of whatever their issues were, whatever their pain points were faster, and what we realized through conversation was they'd reference, yeah, I saw you mentioned that on a video. And by the time a prospect meets with us, for the most part, they've already made the decision on if they want to work with us or not. They already know if they like us or not. If they saw our video and it's not for them, it's not for them, and we don't care; they moved on. So in a way, it's helped deepen the relationship right off the onset, and what used to take three or four meetings to develop is now done in less time. It's roughly two meetings by the time, not only do we mutually agree both the client and us to move forward and work together, but we're already helping them execute on decisions by two meetings in. So it accelerates a lot faster too and that was a part that we just couldn't grasp, was them seeing our office, them seeing how we communicate, our style, all of it. They get a window into that by following us and I just think it's been so critical. 

 

David DeCelle  34:57  

So give me some insight in terms of topically, what your content covers. Oftentimes when advisors think about doing content, they think about the tax videos, they think about Roth conversions, they think about a video on stock option planning. And I think it's certainly important to put yourself out there, and hold yourself out there, I should say, as an expert in your field, so people know, A, they know what you do and B, they know that you're competent. But what you alluded to earlier is that, although people may be seeing those, they may not be actually watching them, or they may not be interacting and engaging with them. However, on the personal side of things, I've seen things that you posted, ranging from personal development to pictures of the family and things like that to fortune cookie Fridays, which I want you to hit on, for sure. So give us some examples as to the types of content that you've done, and the feedback that you've received from certain formats of content and topics of content.

 

John  35:58  

Yeah, for sure. I think Matt was right; not all the information just needs to be cookie cutter financial planning topics. That would grow stale pretty quick. We pepper that in because those things are important too. And even then we try to make those very relatable and interesting. Three months ago, four months ago, my house flooded, and was destroyed on the inside, so we did a video series.

 

David DeCelle

You’ve got to move to the top of the hill where Matt is. 

 

John

Yeah, exactly, I know. 

 

Matt

The water flows down from here, buddy.

 

John

We did this whole video series. Okay, how boring is homeowner's insurance? So we did a whole video series on homeowners insurance and really important aspects to look at. I filmed it in this construction zone in my house, and I think that resonated with people because they're like, whoa, that could happen. That could definitely; it happened to John and his wife. So we do try to make it more relatable and a little more fun. But that wasn't fun, actually, at all. That was pretty dramatic.

 

David DeCelle

Matt’s pipe actually burst in that flow down to your home. 

 

[laughter]

 

John

Yeah, exactly. We did it all just for a video. But, sharing more stuff with the kids, I love the personal development stuff. I mean, that obviously speaks well to me. One video series we did was on this book called The Dream Manager, and it was all about as business owners, within your community of folks. So that could be your employees, that could be your senior leadership team, all the things that you want to be thinking about and doing to help build other people up. It's very personal development. I think that motivational stuff is sometimes important, because we can get bored when it comes to focusing just on money and just on personal finances. So the discipline stuff, that's all huge; we tried to pepper it in and we have a content calendar where we schedule all that stuff out. Then we recycle and recreate content. So we'll say the same message but we’ll slightly alter it for Twitter or for LinkedIn, depending on the audience that's going to be viewing that message. I think what you're alluding to with the fortune cookie Friday, is we have an Alexa skill. So when you say, Alexa, play my flash briefing... I was hoping it was going to go off in the background. So when you say that, it'll play whatever you have pre-loaded as your flash briefing. Maybe it might be news, local weather, whatever. But we have CandorPath 365, which is our Alexa skill, and we are now, voluntarily by the client, because they opted into it, accepted the link, found us, followed it, whatever.

 

David DeCelle  38:25  

You even send some of these Alexa's out to clients to make it easier for them, right?

 

John  38:29  

We do. Yeah, we do. We recap them sometimes. I mean, it just all kind of depends, but we reshare the information so people know where to find it. But it's such an easy way to hear 30, 60, 90 seconds from Matt or I, depending on what day it is, on particular topics that are relevant. So we try to keep it short and concise. The idea for me, how I listened to it, it's like when I'm making my cup of coffee in the morning and I'm making breakfast for the kids or whatever, and I have that playing in the kitchen. So the concept. I mean, do you guys remember when ten years ago, there were benchmarks? I remember going to practice management seminars. They were like, touch points twice a month with clients, you want to touch clients 24 times a year. If you could make that 365 days, you would; but if you ask the client, hey, is it cool if I email you or call you 365 days a year? They're gonna be so bored with that five days in. This is just such a short snippet that they welcomed and invited into their home; and when we did it, we said we don't care if five clients do this, cuz that's five more people that hear us every single day and sometimes numerous times a day. My best case scenario, my dream scenario, is they listen to their Alexa skill, and Matt's voice is playing in the background. And they're scrolling on their phone, and they hit a video of me talking, and they're just like CandorPath everywhere. But that's kind of what we're trying to create, and that's why we talk about client experience and communication. That's part of it. I didn't physically call the client that day, but they still heard from me, right? That's so fun to me, and that challenge of seeing it grow from, I would say we're actively at 15 to 18 clients that consume it, we work with 161 clients. So as a percentage of our client base, is it a lot? No; you could look at that and say, is it even worth it? But to us it 100% is because A, it's easy to do; we know how to do it now. And B, for those people that hear us daily, wow, what a great way to stay in touch with somebody.

 

David DeCelle  40:26  

Tell me about fortune cookie Friday.

 

John  40:28  

Okay, yeah. So every Friday, Matt will be with one of his boys or I’ll have our kids with it. But it's just like a fun little — mine are more personal development; Matt, yours are kind of too — but it's just fun. We have the kids on the audio skill, and they'll share a little something they learned in school, and then we'll talk to that a little bit. It's just a fun way to change it up, and have clients get to hear from our kids.

 

David DeCelle  40:53  

Love it. So, it seems like you guys have a lot going on. You guys got families, obviously your business, I know that there's tax focus to your business as well. So you're probably listening to this in the springtime now, but recorded here on March 4. So you guys got that, you guys got your content, you guys got the fact that you're running the actual business, you guys got the fact that you're managing Megan. Quite frankly, maybe Megan's managing you guys. 

 

Matt 41:23  

Very much so. We desperately needed the female voice. We're two dudes, right? And so we really needed that female, the traits and skills that oftentimes come. I'm not generalizing, but  she just made such a great addition to our team and really helps balance us from making sometimes what is a silly decision. For her, she's very grounded, and she's like, no, we should probably do it this way. And we go, yeah, you're right; that's a much better idea.

 

David DeCelle  41:48  

So you guys have a lot of stuff going on. And I'm excited to go through your favorite book here toward the end before we enter the after hours section. But for John, his favorite book, and it's a little bit of relevancy as well I would imagine, is the book Traction; which I'm sure a number of us who are listening to this show, at least know about the EOS system and that book Traction. Maybe you're implementing it, maybe you're not. I know it's fairly popular throughout our industry. But John, can you hit on when you guys actually started implementing this and the impact that it's had on your business from an organizational as well as an execution standpoint?

 

John  42:31  

Yeah, it was about a year ago. I think we made it a Q1, 2020 goal to read Traction, and it was pretty timing, honestly.

 

David DeCelle  42:38  

Can you give a quick plug? Who was the original person who introduced the book Traction to you?

 

John  42:43  

I'd be happy to. Yes. Jason Mirabella; separate conversation I was having with him; this was probably two years prior. He said, you know, you really should read this book. I had it sitting on my desk for a solid year, year and a half, and then someone else told me about it. I'm like, okay, we got to; it's gaining traction, pun intended. But I kept hearing about it, and so I said to Matt, let's do this, let's make this a quarterly goal. We did, the pandemic hit, and honestly, we just went into client communication mode. But it was, for us, such a great thing to be grounded in; focusing on how do we build our internal structures to be better; all the process stuff that Matt talked about early on in this podcast. Traction kind of hit on that for us. So keeping us accountable to our goals. If I go back to the whole ensemble thing real quick, it really helped us create a shared vision for the company. So in the book, and some people might not like it, because you have homework every time you read a chapter, which I always hate about a book, but we really committed to this one. Throughout the book, there's this thing called the vision traction organizer, and it forced us to create our goals, what we felt like the company was going to look like, and then Matt and I came together. We weren't so surprised to see that ultimately, it was the same goal, but how we were arriving there was different. So that's that give and take where we kind of came up with what that shared vision is for the company. We really operate, I mean, now there's so many tools from it, whether it's your weekly scorecard, they call it a Level 10 weekly meeting, your quarterly rocks meet; I mean, we operate it as much to a tee as we possibly can. David's actually a part in helping us make sure that we don't drop the ball with it.

 

Matt  44:18  

I've actually graduated on to the next book in the series from Gino Wickman, Rocket Fuel. Look at me, I'm a pioneer of Traction. But what I've taken from the book so far is that every business should have a vision, someone who's a visionary, and the other person or the other component to it is an integrator. And so for us, for John and myself, John is 100% the visionary of our firm. He can see where we should be, where we should be going, and he really does plot the course of the direction. Now it's both of us obviously, coming together, but he is the lead in that area. Then the partner to that is the integrator. So okay, the visionary can have all these great ideas, but now we've got to actually put this to work, and that's sort of the role that I've taken. So I've talked about this book with a business group that I'm in. The business group is a great group of guys, but a lot of them are solo entrepreneurs. As I hear them talk about their struggles and their weaknesses, I'm like, man, don't you have an integrator to help fix those things? And they just don't, it really is difficult. But the next book in the series, just is so great in shaping the different roles within the firm, and then not conforming 100% to that; but to say, all right, John's going to be the visionary, I'm going to be the integrator. Here's where I need to be in assisting him, and here's what he needs to be doing in order to fill that role, and working together from there. So for us, it's just, it's fit in really, really well with our practice. 

 

John  45:39  

Well we’ve got a month left for Q1, so maybe I'll make it a goal to finish that book with you. Because I haven’t started that one yet.

 

David DeCelle  45:43  

Well, I just went on Amazon and bought it because I haven't read it yet. So let's finish it before our dinner. I think that's on April 9.

 

John  45:51  

Sounds good to me.

 

Matt  45:51  

That sounds great, man.

 

David DeCelle  45:52  

What are some of the things that you are working toward or tracking, through the traction and EOS method? What aspects of the business have been a focus of yours since you implemented that model? 

 

Matt  46:07  

I think for us, we had a couple of very important metrics that we wanted to look at. I think some of the obvious ones were trailing twelve month revenue; how much money is in our bank accounts? Those are things that if you're operating as an ensemble, I might assume, hey, John's handling the finance side; I don’t need to look at that. And what we find is that if you make that assumption, sometimes no one's looking at it. So for us tracking some of those numbers are always critical. I think that for us, and I'll speak on John's behalf and you jump in John, but I think the number one thing that we got from it is identifying what an ideal client looks like, from a revenue standpoint. The ideal client needs to have a good personality, needs to be a nice person, needs to fit with our personality. But we've actually been able to identify what is the number we need in order to continue growing our business, and what's that minimum number? And for us, it is a black and white, for the most part, a black and white number that we know, here's what we need from a revenue standpoint to continue to grow. John, maybe you can elaborate on that more. 

 

John  47:09  

I’ll just back up for a quick second. Your scorecard is meant to represent the sheet that you update weekly. So for us, it's every Monday, we go and we update this and we have assigned tasks. Megan knows what she's responsible for updating, Matt for him, and myself. And it's meant to represent five to fifteen numbers that represent the pulse of your company, and it doesn't have to be all financial driven. I do think the biggest element for us is we dug deep, did this client segmentation; and through this, we know our average per client revenue, we can identify very easily our top 20% clients, how our baseline fee and where we want to be charging is moving upwards as this is all growing. So it does go back to this whole idea of not adding a client just for the sake of more revenue; but adding a client that is a meaningful relationship that fits that ideal. This helped us create that ideal client. But we also do some very sales oriented things. We track the number of leads and referrals that come in, and it's almost like it just moves down the line. But it's how many leads and referrals came in that week, how many intro calls were booked that week, how many clients on-boarded that week? What's the revenue of those clients on board that week? The reason for that is to create, what we had hoped and it's starting to really materialize, is to show us a trend of for every ten clients referred, X will come on board. That's interesting. So there's tons of different ways to dice up the statistics, but other than just going based on feel — which is how most professionals do it, they’re like in sales and growth mode — this really gives you just a pulse on what's happening within the business. But I'll agree with Matt, the client segmentation part was and is the biggest one for us. 

 

David DeCelle  48:49  

I think as you continue to grow, it's important to make sure that when you're at a sustainable place as it relates to your own income off of the revenue that the business is generating, that the only people that you're adding are people that are going to give you energy, that you're going to enjoy working with. Otherwise your business is going to just start working you as opposed to you working your business.

 

Matt  49:12  

Because of that scorecard, and I'm not gonna say this boastfully, but we've had six referrals in the last month. We've had more than six, I think maybe we had ten, John, whatever the number is. But we said no, not no in a disrespectful way, but we were able to confidently say these people were not the right fit for you. And it was because we knew the numbers. We knew the personality. We were steadfast in our resolve. Listen, for the first 17 years of my career, if you had a pulse, and you were halfway decent, I was going to work with you. And that really has changed, and it's a byproduct of us knowing our business so well, and being at a place now where we could confidently say we know what the ideal client looks like. We have no problem saying if you're not the ideal client, there's an advisor out there for you, we are just not it. I've never been in that position and it hasn't been until the last really year of this, that we're able to both look at each other and say this is a good fit, or absolutely this is not a good fit, and not even think twice about saying no. So that's been a real, real interesting aspect of this whole traction.

 

John  50:12  

It's hard for me too. Early on in your career, you're just so relationship-development oriented, sales oriented, whatever, that it's almost a weird exercise to ever think that you wouldn't work with somebody. But even just in these last couple months, we've had a couple situations where the personality is just, they just weren’t a right fit. Frankly, they just weren't nice people to work with, and you could tell that within the first 30 seconds of the conversation with them. I mean, you guys know the type of personality. And so that's a weird transition to be able to confidently say, I'm sorry, but I don't think it's going to work out. We say it in a more professional way, but whereas in years past, you'd kind of grit down and say, all right, I'll do this; even though you knew in your heart of hearts that it wasn't a good relationship from the onset. So it's been an interesting transition, but the scorecard has allowed us to confidently say, hey, we know the numbers; and it allows us to make that decision more confidently, I think.

 

David DeCelle  51:04  

Awesome. Well, John, that's your favorite book, your most recent favorite book. So as everyone may know, after listening to our new format of episodes, part of the goal is to promote learning both in and outside of our industry. I find that a lot of advisors either become complacent and stop learning, and therefore, I think over time, start rotting. You’re either green and growing or ripe and rotting. Or if they are learning, they tend to stay within the confines of our industry. So I definitely want to be able to promote learning outside of our industry, because there's a lot of good ideas that other types of companies are doing. For Matt's favorite book, I'm sure we've all read this at some point in our lives, or if you're a parent, maybe read it to your kids. I can see Matt's face. He's like, oh, crap, I forget what I put in here.

 

Matt  51:53  

I did this so long ago, I don’t recall; something silly probably.

 

David DeCelle  51:57  

Matt’s favorite book, apparently, is One Fish Two Fish, Red Fish Blue Fish.

 

Matt  52:10  

Ok, so of the group, I'm not the intellectual. I'm not the big reader. And honestly, that's why an ensemble for us works. John has that trait where he's like, alright dude, you got to read this book, and I'll do it. But if it's up to me, in my off time, I don't enjoy financial books. I don't enjoy business stuff because I do this all day long. And so I feel like, right now, this whole one that I'm reading for Rocket Fuel; it's taking me forever to get through it. Phenomenal book. I'm voraciously taking notes. But it's a struggle because I enjoy it for five minutes, and then I'm like, okay, is there anything else out there? So yeah, I did that a little bit tongue in cheek there, but it's just not my strength, that side of it. That's really where I count on John to say, alright, dude, you got to read this book. Take this one serious and go for it. I'll do it with kicking and screaming, as David very well knows.

 

John  53:03  

Meanwhile, Matt’s over here like, hey, John, you should really read Green Eggs and Ham. It's a great book, I don’t know if you've ever heard of it.

 

Matt  53:10  

Actually, it's not the right time to be talking about Dr. Seuss is it? It looks like there's some issues happening right now there. So, but no, at the end of the day, I enjoy reading books to my boys, and I'm way into the series that they're into, which is awesome. I really enjoyed reading to them at night. 

 

David DeCell

Well Dr. Seuss is okay, here.

 

Matt

Listen, I'm good with it. 

 

David DeCelle  53:27  

Actually, because we're recording this in March, on March 17, speaking of green eggs and ham, grab that food coloring, Matt, and make some green eggs and ham for the kids.

 

Matt  53:38  

I definitely will.

 

John  53:39  

I'm the only one that's Irish in this group, I think, right? David, you got a little bit Irish in you?

 

David DeCelle  53:44  

I got a little bit of everything. I’m a mutt.

 

Matt  53:47  

Okay, there we go. All right. 

 

John

I like it.

 

David DeCelle  53:49  

Well, awesome. So before we head into the after hours section of the podcast, John and Matt, if people want to connect with you, what's the best place to do so? Obviously all this is going to be in the show notes as well.

 

John  54:01  

I think our Facebook page is a great spot to just go check out any social media stuff that we do and you can message us on there. So it's just Facebook.com/CandorPath, c-a-n-d-o-r-p-a-t-h, or just email us. J-o-h-n, [email protected], [email protected]. 

 

Matt  54:20  

We’ve talked to a bunch of Model FA guys, or people who are interested in maybe hiring Model FA, and not just being a spokesman for it, but really trying to let them know what our experience has been with your organization, David; which again, has evolved. It was very different three years ago than it is today. And that's good. You guys worked with us and evolved with us and have so many offerings that for us, if we need a resource, we know it's there. That for us has been incredible because we've never had that before.

 

John  54:48  

Yeah, I think from our point of view, community is the word that I would come up with, so obviously it's great. David, we get to meet with you; you act as our personal coach, somebody that we can kind of lean on and brainstorm ideas with and get perspective from. But I think the community is great within Model FA, just have a better understanding. I mean, sometimes you feel like you're on an island in this industry. Like, are we doing this right or are we way off base? So it's great to have other people to brainstorm that stuff with.

 

David DeCelle  55:15  

For sure. I mean, I think we have such a good relationship. I mean, you guys are the reason why I decided to move from Boston to Florida. 

 

Matt  55:23  

I thought it was Tom Brady, hold on hold on. You told us it was Tom Brady, that you're following him wherever he goes.

 

David DeCelle  55:27  

I did just re-up on the season tickets for this upcoming season. So we'll see if we're actually able to go this year. I was only able to go to a couple games with the limited capacity. So we shall see. We shall see. Well, thank you guys so much for joining. I appreciate it, it was a pleasure. And for those of you who stuck around, feel free to continue to stick around for the after hours section. As we've been doing, we do have two asks at the end of every episode. One is if you found value in this episode, which I think most of you if not all of you probably did, share it with a friend in the industry or even outside the industry, if you think they're gonna find it helpful. So go ahead and share that, and then also, if you go and leave us a review, that would definitely help us as it relates to ranking, which then means more people will be able to get value from these episodes. If you take a screenshot of that review, and shoot me a text to 978-228-2338; again, 978-228-2338, send that to me in the text, you'll get an automatic reply for you to enter in your information. That way you get saved in my phone, and then beyond that automated reply, you're texting with me back and forth. So we can build a relationship from afar and answer any questions. But at the very least, for sending that review, and mentioning John and Matt in your text, I will then figure out how many people did the review and pull a name out of the hat and we will give access to our accelerator course to you for free. So that's what you could potentially win by going ahead and leaving us a review and letting us know your thoughts. So appreciate everyone's time. John and Matt, thanks again. For those who want to stick around for more candid session, stick around for the after hours.

 

After Hours

 

David DeCelle

It was fun. I got some funny ‘would you rather’ questions that I’m going to ask you guys. These are supposedly called ‘Would you rather questions that are impossible to answer’ so you guys are gonna feel conflicted on these. And whatever you're thinking that they're gonna be, they're way worse. So Matt, would you rather have bad breath or smelly feet?

 

Matt  57:50  

Smelly feet.

 

David DeCelle  57:51  

Yeah?

 

Matt  57:52  

Do I have to give a why behind it? Or is it just a single answer?

 

David DeCelle  57:55  

I want to know why.

 

Matt  57:56  

Okay, I mean, smelly feet can be like, yeah, you can cover up shoes. That's no big deal. You have halitosis and no one wants to be near you. Although right now with a mask on...

 

John  58:05  

I was just gonna say what are you talking about, just put a mask on.

 

Matt  58:06  

I know, but who knows when this is going to be listened to? At some point in time hopefully this will be behind us. But as of right now, I'm so funny; I still cover my mouth when I cough and do those types of things even though I'm wearing a mask, so I'm still gonna be steadfast with my answer. I'm going with stinky feet; that can be fixed.

 

David DeCelle  58:23  

Love it. John, what about would you rather have spaghetti for hair or sweat mayonnaise?

 

John  58:29  

Spaghetti for hair. I could shave it. I could shave my hair. You can't get rid of sweat.

 

David DeCelle  58:35  

No, no, you can't shave your hair.

 

John  58:36  

Well, still the answer’s the same, spaghetti for hair.

 

Matt  58:39  

I’m definitely a spaghetti guy.

 

John  58:40  

Sweat mayonnaise. That's disgusting on so many levels.

 

David DeCelle  58:47  

Would you rather, Matt, only be able to whisper or only be able to shout?

 

Matt  58:53  

I'm a shouter. I've got to shout.

 

John  58:56  

It’s what he does already, David.

 

Matt  58:58  

I do a lot of yelling. It's a good venting tool. So no, I am 100% a shouter. No whisper for me.

 

David DeCelle  59:04  

John, would you rather sneeze every time you say hi? Or have the urge to pee every time you ask a question?

 

Matt 59:09  

Oh, God, I could answer that one for him.

 

John  59:11  

Go ahead, answer for me.

 

Matt  59:13  

John is a big pee-er.

 

John  59:14  

I'm going to go with the peeing answer because I attempt to drink a gallon of water a day, and so that's pretty much normal for me that I pee constantly.

 

Matt  59:21  

By the way, if you're listening to this, and I don't care if you're a health expert, do not drink a gallon of water a day. You will be peeing all day long. Your productivity goes to a zero. Yeah, I did that once.

 

John  59:34  

I just finished my last...you’re outnumbered, David agrees with me.

 

David DeCelle  59:35  

Whoever's listening, don't listen to Matt, what he just said.

 

John  59:38  

Two to one.

 

David DeCelle  59:40  

Matt, would you rather adopt a British accent every time you're having a serious conversation or laugh every time someone cries?

 

Matt  59:48  

Oh gosh, no, I can't laugh when someone — actually I'm a big laugher when crying happens, that's how I deal with it. But I'll definitely take adopt a British accent just to not be uncouth.

 

John  59:58  

That one seems like an easy answer, British accent’s cool. 

 

David DeCelle  1:00:01  

John, would you rather talk like Yoda or breathe like Darth Vader? 

 

John  1:00:09  

Talk like Yoda? So I'm watching Mandalorian right now, and I'm not really into the whole Star Wars thing. I mean, I like it, but it's not something that I love; and I started watching Mandalorian and I am hooked. So hooked. This question is very timely, but yeah, I'll talk about Yoda.

 

David DeCelle  1:00:23  

Well, it's interesting, because I'm not big into Star Wars, either, and everyone's still talking about Mandalorian. So the fact that you're not big into Star Wars, but you're liking Mandalorian; maybe I'll give it a shot.

 

John  1:00:35  

It's good. It's worth it.

 

David DeCelle  1:00:36  

Matt, would you rather have a head the size of a tennis ball or the size of a watermelon?

 

Matt  1:00:43  

A small head is weird. You know, my Beetlejuice days...

 

John  1:00:46  

I was just thinking that. 

 

Matt  1:00:47  

It’s not a good look. I'll go with a big watermelon head versus a little. I mean, my head's a little big anyway, so it makes my ears look small that usually stick out.

 

David DeCelle  1:01:00  

There you go. Couple more. John, would you rather hunt for every meal or only be able to eat at McDonald's for every meal?

 

John  1:01:09  

Only be able to eat at McDonald's for every meal. I think I could find some grilled chicken, maybe do a salad. Hunting for every meal, that's a lot of work. We just did this whole thing on outsourcing and leveraging time.

 

David DeCelle  1:01:21  

Well, you can hire people to hunt. And finally, Matt, would you rather be in the fight club?

 

Matt  1:01:27  

Yes. I don't even know what the other thing is. I definitely want to be in a fight club.

 

David DeCelle  1:01:31  

Well based on the other thing, you're definitely going to pick it, because would you rather be in a fight club that meets once a month or a book club that meets everyday?

 

Matt  1:01:38  

Hell no, I'm not the intellectual one here. Give me a fight club, getting punched in the face. You can learn so much more from getting punched in the face than you get from reading a book. 

 

John  1:01:48  

I don’t know, is the book club at the second grade reading level?

 

Matt

Yeah, what are we reading? 

 

John

If it's Green Eggs and Ham, he's gonna love it. 

 

Matt

I’ll crush it.

 

David DeCelle  1:01:57  

Actually, I think I started with Matt, so John, last one. Would you rather have to wear a bib every time you go out to eat or drink from a sippy cup every time you're at the bar?

 

John  1:02:07  

I would wear a bib. I would definitely wear a bib. I think it would keep people away from me too. They'd be like, this guy's so strange.

 

David DeCelle  1:02:12  

I think the sippy cup is worse than the bib.

 

Matt  1:02:16  

I do have a sippy cup everywhere I go. I'm always drinking my water bottle and it's the sippy one.

 

John 1:02:20  

I think he specifically said drinking at the bar. Did I hear that right? So the idea of drinking like an old fashioned through a sippy cup sounds not desirable. Whereas wearing a bib, I can do.

 

Matt  1:02:29  

Who hasn't put their napkin in their shirt so they don't get messy. And I'm a very messy eater. 

 

John

Apparently you’ve done that.

 

David DeCelle  1:02:34  

Maybe if I'm at a lobster bake or something, but not when I'm eating John's spaghetti hair.

 

Matt  1:02:42  

Well, we're actually having dinner together soon, so you'll see my bib on there.

 

John  1:02:46  

We're gonna do all these things at that dinner. I'm gonna have a sippy cup for my bourbon.

 

David DeCelle  1:02:50  

Let's do it. Awesome. 

 

John  1:02:52  

Thanks for having us.

 

David DeCelle  1:02:54  

Yeah, of course. Thanks for being a part of the show. And for everyone who stuck around for the after hours, hopefully had some fun with some of our stupid questions and answers. John and Matt, thanks for joining. 

 

Thanks, David. 

 

Take care.

 

Transcribed by https://otter.ai