Ep #18: Transform and Scale Your Financial Advisory Firm with Practical Solutions

Today's guest is a true force in business transformation, Jen Goldman. With over 30 years of experience in the service industry, Jen has helped hundreds of professional service firms grow smarter and faster. She's a specialist in strategic planning, team optimization, process efficiency, and sustainable change, all without burnout. Jen's thought leadership has been featured in lots of magazines and she's been on some of the most respected stages in our industry. This is a conversation packed with insight, strategy and actionable advice. Let's dive in. Hi Jen, welcome to the Advisor Summit. We're so excited to have you on.

Hi. I'm so psyched to be here. You and me, energy together. Woo hoo.

I know, I feel like this is going to be a lot of energy. So for all of our listeners, get ready because it's going to be a fun one but also excited. And I do feel like good energy in business is part of the gig. Honestly, I feel like you want to work with people similar to you and want to bring that fire and passion and I always felt that when we've come together. So I'm excited to learn from you. I feel like our listeners have so much to gain from this. So this is a really good day for all of us. So let's kind of dive in and kind of start talking about how you founded my virtual COO and just kind of the background of how you got into that because I always feel like it is a bit of a niche market. So walk me through kind of how you became this great business transformation specialist.

Yeah, absolutely. And I'll do speed talk because I don't like talking about myself, which is so weird. So long story short, I was in the financial planning space. I grew up kind of like Solomon Smith Barney and then I went to a multifamily office firm and long story short, I'm going to date myself. Internet was really just getting hopping and software online was getting hopping and what I noticed is all these businesses were trying to scale and they didn't have that kind of go to person to just put systems and processes people in the right seats. Like all this stuff that goes into the day to day, right. And so unfortunately for one of the employers I was a part of, they wanted to overhaul their business to get the highest valuation. So once they let me do it, I was like, this is, this is my career path, like this is it. And so then I went on did it in a couple other firms that were a mix. Like one was like insurance and wealth, one was wealth and tax, like always different variations. And then I Hung my shingle out in 2006, but really officially in seven, right before the market crash.

I was going to say what timing says what timing.

And you know, my goal honestly at that point was to pay for daycare because when it crashed I couldn't set the bar any higher than that.

I was like, they are just going to fund what the bare minimums are. Yes, I feel that.

Yeah, yeah, yes. Don't you? So, yeah, and that is almost 20 years ago. And so that's, that's kind of how it all started.

And is it always been in the financial advisory space? Is that always been kind of your.

Well, it definitely has been the big market segment because you know, I've grown up in it. But no, when I started actually we worked with mortgage company. Anybody who was in professional services.

Okay.

We felt if you're in a service business, right, that's different than product. And I also knew I wasn't going to do just in time, inventory management, all that fun stuff that you know, that those type of consultants do. So we just did professional services also because we knew that by working in different industries we were going to bring some good stuff back to the other industries. And so that cross pollination to this day I would say more than 50% of our business is in financial services. But we've worked with like holistic health centers and yeah, it's been fun.

It's kind of fun. I feel like when you have kind of those, like you said, you can gain something from every different kind of industry and segment and bringing that back to your core is massive. And I think there's something to be said there about any learning experience. If you have the opportunity to kind of get outside of your little zone and learn from others and learn from, you know, these industries, it's a massive build for your current industry as well. So I love it. And you've kind of, you've, at this point you've transformed and changed that thousands of lives and of people and scaled and helped a lot of probably overwhelmed firm owners. So what, why do you think that is? And how can advisors kind of refrain from that fear and how can they kind of move past that initial like, oh gosh, I'm not sure if I'm ready to grow, but I want to type mentality.

Yeah. So the answer is usually to write down what you think you want your future to look like and then let it simmer. I am a huge fan of the poster paper, the whiteboarding, the electronic board. I don't really care. I just know burning in the brain is not.

Nope. It's right.

You know, and so because that's all. Listen, that's what you guys are doing, right? Like you're tracking. And the point is. Well, we're tracking, but for what reason? Like what's your goal?

Where are we going? What's our purpose? It's very like eos, very like rock. You know what I mean? But there's so much power behind that. I feel like if you're not looking forward to something, you don't know what path to take. And you don't know and you don't know if you're doing it right. Like you don't know if you're accomplishing the goals you've set out to accomplish. So I feel that, I think it's.

Like that's a good, like, woohoo. But like this flow of it doesn't feel good where you're just the mouse in the wheel, like just running and running, running. Right. It does feel good if you're like the mouse heading toward the cheese.

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah.

And yeah, you know, so what's. And, and I, I just to go. To move your cheese. But like, you know, what is that cheese? What is that? What is that? Vision of future. Write it down and guess what? A month from now it's going to change. That's okay.

Yeah.

But at least have something that you're trying to like run toward. So that's my answer, you know, and you and I both know, like, we could use the traction, we could use our own format. You can use a white piece of paper. I think most of us have trouble with a white piece of paper because there's no format or formality. So grab something that's a template and do that and then you work back from that. I think when you know a little bit of a sense of what you want or what you don't want, then it's a little bit easier making decisions every day or every week on what to work on.

Yeah. Is this getting me closer to my goal or is this getting me further from my goal? But if you don't have that goal, I even think too. I know a lot of times people get overwhelmed with like 1, 3, 5 year plans and I absolutely fall in that category. I will out myself out very quickly. I'm like, gosh, one year I'm like, I don't know what's happening next week. You know what I mean? Like, what's my goal for this quarter? So I think really sitting down and putting that into practice, not only Grows you as a person, but it also really helps your business. To say again, is this moving me towards my goal? So I've really had to learn a lot and thankfully I have great teammates that are like, no, we're doing this. And I'm like, okay, let's make this happen. And it can shift, like you said, it can shift slightly, but. But in reality, like having at least a purpose and a goal is massive. So once they start scaling too, I know in a lot of your talks and a lot of your teachings also you call, you. You use a phrase called scaling without burnout. And I felt like that was incredibly powerful because I do feel like this consistent. More. More and more scale. Scale. Scale mentality can really lead to burnout. So can you kind of walk us through what scaling feels like and what it should be done, how it should be done correctly versus like just continually moving the target for more?

Yeah, I think it's about getting grounded along the process. So I'm a big believer in having like a P and L projection. I'm a big believer in looking at the team and the. In the design of the team. So scaling burnout happens when you're just, you're just constantly going to do list and adding. Adding more things and it's like throwing darts in all different directions. Right. Scaling without burnout is. You're gonna hear a theme here. Okay, I'm about writing.

Yeah, I love it.

About writing it down and coming back to that to come back and get grounded again and. Okay, why am I doing this? What does the team look like today? People, your most important. Right. What are my numbers look like? Super important, because it tells you a story and then from there decide what's a priority for the next say six months. I think also to the scaling burnout. If you do this too often, it's too soon. Things haven't kind of like settled in and if you do it once a year, it's not enough.

Gotcha. Is there like an ideal time frame that you recommend? Like should people kind of relook at their goals every quarter, every six months? What do you kind of recommend?

Well, I'll tell you the ideal and then the reality.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I love a good reality check moment.

So let's go ideal. Ideal is every three months. Why? Because every three months you should be celebrating the wins. Like the win could have been. I gave up this responsibility to somebody else on the team. Woohoo. Or the win could be we automated this piece of work that nobody liked or it wasn't. It Wasn't it was holding people back from rising. Right.

Yeah.

So I think every three months would be ideal. The reality is probably every six months is absolutely like, yeah, you can't do once a year. You got to do every six months and you should do it with the team. I think that leaders put too much work on themselves and I think that's where the burnout comes to.

Agree.

Like I just on the call yesterday and like you're working just the three leaders. I'm like, you guys got your whole team there. They're super want to help and get energized. Why don't you let them fill in what wins you had and what things they think are priority and then you guys could edit the heck out of it.

Yep. Yeah. And it gives them ownership. We're reading a book right now called Extreme Ownership by Jacko and Leaf. I'm sure you've read it and it's incredible, but it talks a lot about that. It's utilizing the members of your team to make them leaders. So then when you are leaders overall, you are now just kind of doing your sub units, not the entirety of the entire mission. It also makes them own their piece a little bit more because they are now responsible and giving them measurable KPIs to know when they are doing well and when they're not doing well. And that's going to be really important as well. So I love that. Yeah. So if you're out there, look at it every three months. Definitely look at it every six if you haven't even started. So. And I love that you said numbers. That's important also is. I mean we're firm data believers and that's really big to us. But I think in any capacity, whether it's not just, you know, your actual numbers as an advisor of setting appointments, keeping appointments, it's the full trajectory of numbers with, you know, are you doing your PNLs? I think that's huge as well. So that's kind of. You talk about kind of three methods in your power up your skills on. On scaling up and on kind of making teams grow. And it's the napkin five year production growth, the responsibilities chart and the P and ls. Can you kind of walk us through maybe each of those methods and which do you feel like really help unlock the most growth for firms?

Oh, well, yeah. No, you would know this better than me. Okay, so let me do napkin first because you. This resonates completely with what you guys do.

Yeah.

Writing down what you think you want in terms of Revenue and working back to where you are today. That's the napkin growth model. It is Excel. Absolutely.

Reverse engineering it. Like reverse.

Yeah. Yeah. Because where's the. The big question mark is the middle. Right. It's not where you are today, and it's not where you want to be. It's. How do you. What do you. What does it look like to get there?

Yep.

So doing the napkin, if I could just visualize that loud. It's a column per year, and it basically works from the number of clients, the P and L numbers you have today where you think you want to be in five years. And then it like, it pretty much can map out and say, I have to bring on that much more business. Whoa. How are we going to do that? Is that marketing is a biz dev, whatever. Right. Or I want to bring on that much more business. How many more people do I need on the team?

Yeah.

So the napkin helps you. Yeah, I. To be fair, most often when we do the napkin calculation, they notch back their goals.

I was going to say, does it bring, like, a sense of reality? Because we do this, we offer actually a free tool on our website for advisors with this, and it says, hey, like, if your goal is to get X amount of AUM and X amount of annuities, and this is what you did last year, and then it multi. Multiplies that. Right. So it says, okay, now you need to get two times the number of first appointments. And I feel like it is a lot of times a reality check, but also in a good way. You don't want to live in this ethereal kind of anecdotal world where you don't really see what's happening. So I love the napkin. I actually want to do that with our team and say, okay, like, if this is our goal, you know, we do the kind of reverse. But I think that that is such a key metric.

Yeah. But I love that you have the tool. I. That's amazing. Because listen, we know these, like, calculators. I grew up with them. Right. These online basically said it's like a sponge track to the heart that got the mind. Like, am I being realistic about this? Because businesses waste so much time and money and they burn out on the idea of going bigger.

Yeah.

But they don't really know the reality of going bigger.

Yeah.

So, yeah, so that's. That's the one piece. The other piece is the humans. We just did this the other day with. With FP and talking about responsibilities and authority.

Okay.

Responsibilities. Yeah. These maps are again, done collaboratively as a team, which some leaders like, are you kidding me? I'm like, absolutely. You fill in the level of authority per area of the business on one map. Okay. Think of it like tic tac toe kind of stuff.

Yeah.

And then. And then our responsibilities same. It's like a tic tac toe. It's all tiles. You write in all your responsibilities, and then you get to move them to a shed column. So you don't actually get to shed, but you get to tell your manager or your underlings, I don't want to be doing this anymore.

Yeah.

Somebody take it on. Or can we eliminate it somehow?

Yeah.

And that. That is another, like, hugely. Because again, if people don't have clarity of their responsibilities on the level of authority today, this is where people start looking for another job.

Yeah. And it's unfair to them. And also, it costs you way more time and money to look for more people versus actually fixing the problem. And I find that there is kind of a unrealistic that when you shed or delegate to another person, there's this, like, really horrible, like, connotation to that. Like, oh, I'm just. Your leader's lazy. Like, they're just getting rid of this because they don't want to do it. And I just had this last week. I was shedding the responsibility for the greater good of the company so that I can do what I do best. And this isn't what I do best. And I'm moving it to a counterpart. But it's like this weird internal feeling like, oh, gosh, I'm being lazy because I'm moving this off my plate and it's not. And I think a lot of advisors, especially, like, giving them the freedom to say delegation is not a laziness factor because the entrepreneur aligned and then especially their go go people. And that's not. That's not bad. Delegation is not bad. And giving them. And what I find too, like, I moved something off my plate. And my counterpart was so excited to take it on, he felt honored that he's getting this, you know, this new responsibility that I trust him enough. And I'm like, I do trust you enough. Like, I do want you to take this on. So it's really like, you can honor your team and get them to grow in their own, you know, spaces too. But I love what you said, too, like, making sure they know it. They have to know what they're responsible for.

Yeah. I mean, let's bring it to real to life. Let's say you have a puppy. Okay. And you're asking the puppy to go fetch the paper. That's a form of delegation. Is that so long? The puppy.

It's cute.

Right? This is what I say to anybody who has children. Okay.

Yeah. Do.

Do you want to hold back your kids from learning and being excited and being empowered? How does the kid feel when they learn how to make their first egg on the stove and they don't burn the stove up? Like, come on. When you don't delegate to others in a trans. They don't learn, they don't feel valued. They don't feel like they're. They're being challenged.

It's true.

Done. You're done at the doorstep with that person. You lose them. They. And this is the worst part, right? Disengagement. They don't quit. They just mentally disengage.

Which is worse? Like, I'm always like, just quit before you disengage. Like, truly, if this is not your passion, like, let me write your recommendation. Let me help you find it. Like, I want people on my team that want to be A players and. Or B + players working to be an A player because they don't know the skill set yet. I think that's so true. Disengagement is not fun. So I love the responsibilities.

Yeah. Let's talk about P L. Because you're. This is your animal. So basically we go simple compared to what you guys do. Okay. To be fair, I love simple.

I just listen. I'm like, amen, Kiss, baby. Like all day.

Right. So we take the pnl right. Month by month. So download it into Excel, export it. That's wonderful. Feature in these programs month by month and then add a few rows. And now anybody in finance could do this in their sleep. So if you're in a different industry, this might be a little harder.

There's also ChatGPT now and YouTube to help teach you.

Absolutely. Or do it for you, for that matter.

Yeah.

Honestly, every time you have a thought, adding a bonus to somebody, hiring more marketing, investing in a contract, whatever it is, you add that line item to the P and L and that cost amount. The reason you're doing that is because you're spot checking your profitability, bottom line, okay. And it starts to tell you your. What more revenue you should be bringing in. So, like, I really want to hire this person so that I can offload something. Okay, let's call an executive assistant. I really want to hire an executive assistant. You put them in the September column. You look at your profit number at the bottom. That adjusted you Go to the top. And you look at your revenue. Go, ooh, I need more revenue. Yeah, Add a little more revenue in. Now you know your goal of how many clients you need to earn to afford the ea.

Love this, Love this. I feel like this is the thing. Reverse engineer it. Like, figure it out from the backwards front. Yep. Yeah.

Versus in your head, which is the burnout. I mean, the burnout, literally. And I'm not an expert. I have a friend, Rachel, who's like, she's the burnout queen, as I call her. But you're literally saying, smoking out your brain with burnout. Let's not do that anymore. Yeah, yeah.

Or holding it all in there is hard, too. And actually writing it down. And I think that's huge. So, like, on the front too, of, you know, profitability increases. So I think this is something. When people come to you, they're obviously ready to scale, they're ready to grow, and they want to increase their profitability. What's one without doubling their staff? I would also say that I think that's a big thing, that people don't always want more and more staff. They want better processes, more profitability and earning more clients, et cetera. So what's maybe one concrete thing that a financial. Can a financial advisor could implement, maybe starting this month, to move into the direction of scaling up and increasing profitability? That's a tough one.

No, I know. But tough is good, right? Isn't this what we have to deal with? I mean, I'm going to say this. Please don't take offense, whoever's listening. I love it.

Yeah.

Continuing education and conference attendance.

Yeah.

I mean, I gotta be honest. You can't go to everything. We all want to learn. I get it. But you gotta pick and choose. I just see a little too much of that happening and not enough money spent on having lunch with a client or a coi.

Yeah.

And maybe it's fear of being one on one. Maybe it's fear of actually doing what I would call business development versus just going and learning. But that's a given. Yeah. Watch that. You need another one. That's my first.

No, that's perfect. I think that's great. I think utilizing referrals and COIs and really spending time into there. So I think that's huge. And really tapping into your base of existing clients as well. I think a lot of people don't necessarily tap into that. And I'm like, that could be. We just did a study and it was like, gosh, it could be over 50% of your book is your existing business. You really need to tap into that as well. So I think too a lot of firm owners kind of get stuck in this, in the business mentality where they're just working on the business and they're constantly in the weeds of the business instead of owning the business and running the business as a whole. And I, I think that's by nature, I think they're very financial advisors as a whole. I love that style of person because they're very doers. They're like, boom, boom, boom, I'm going to get it done. There's no stopping. And I love it. But how do you kind of teach people to shift the framework of the dynamic and give the ownership kind of that CEO role versus the advisor role? How do you kind of teach them to kind of get into that mentality?

Well, we can use the analogy of if you don't have a plan, what's the point of implementation? I mean, they know that if they're a financial planning firm, so right away you can kind of throw it back at them.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Because you know the plan is the strategy. Right. The implementation should be like a no brainer. Once you have the plan. Yeah, we can tell that story and kind of get their mind to shift. The other thing is we try to make the strategy easier. They and their minds. It's constellation thinking. Right. You do it because you're running a business. I do it where you have to think about, well, if I change this, what's the trickle effect across the business that is really overwhelming to them because their brains are already working on behalf of their clients to do all that. So if you make it a little bit easier to connect the dots, and that's what we do a lot with the visual is say, okay, if you make this change, then this is the trickle effect. And to be fair, you can kind of ask AI these things too. Like if I make this change, what are the top 10 things I need to think about?

Yeah.

So we encourage them through visual, through organization. What's another thing we do with mindset? I think there's a fear, right? Like I think when you're running a business, maybe it's fear missing out, the FOMO kind of thing. And just say you're not missing out because you wrote it down like you won't forget it. And so if you, our trick is to get them away from the fear and let the prefrontal cortex really kick in, which is the calm and rational brain that you and I wish we had all day long.

Yeah, I know.

My husband's probably like.

I wish you had a common, rational brain for a few minutes of it. This would be great.

What are you said at work? But you don't.

Yeah, I always love. I know everybody needs like business. Molly is very different than your at home Molly. And I'm like, but I love it. I think that makes me me, you know, so. But I'm with you there. That fear is definitely something to kind of. I also think acknowledging that, like just acknowledging it and saying, hey, like I'm fearful of X, Y and Z. And like you said, I think the theme is writing it down, like putting it on paper, acknowledging it and then moving past it. You know, what am I going to do? Stop stuck in the sphere? Okay. And then like, I always love the idea of like playing it forward. So I can either sit in the sphere, do what I'm doing, and maybe that's great. I always want to give advisors freedom. Also. Not everybody wants to grow and scale into this massive CEO organization and that's okay. But if you are doing it and fear's holding you back, that's when we need to play it forward and say, okay, if I sit in this fear, what's going to happen? Nothing. Or if I move past this, what's going to happen? Potential massive transformation. And I think that's huge. Huge, Huge, huge. So I think it's awesome. It's good. So what are your talks? You also give. I know you give a lot of. You help so many firms. And I always want to reiterate that because I feel like every firm is a little bit different. And even just with this podcast, people are going to know the massive amounts of people you've helped. So one of your talks you have is accelerating growth without change fatigue. Can you kind of walk us through what is change fatigue? How do you coach firms to kind of push through that again without burning out their team is the goal of that? Because I feel like too. I mean, times are changing, AI is changing. You know, just, there's so many fintech things that are changing in this industry especially. And I think that there's a lot of unknowns out there. So how do you kind of walk teams through changes? Because there are several coming up.

Yeah, there's always. And it's. It's accelerated. That's for sure. We actually use a little technique of the four Ps, so we named it eventually when we realized we were using letter P. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Fall in your lap. Trust me, it didn't make it. So when we write down a change. We actually give it purpose.

Okay.

Before you decide when to do it and who does it. And the four things are, is this going to impact. Is this going to boost positively your people, your productivity, your profitability, or your presence.

Love. Say it louder.

And I'm not. I'm gonna be honest. This is not. Like, again, there's other ways. Other famous people have said it. We just happen to use it this way, so. And then we always say, share this with your team. So to be fair, this strategic board should not live in the minds of just the leaders. It should be somewhere open. I mean, in a dreamy world. The whiteboards of the internal walls of the office. If you're on site, Write down the three to five major changes and the why one of the Ps. In a hybrid world, obviously, we could use electronic and then come back to that. And I always say, could you please? At least this goes back to the quarterly you asked before. Yeah, yeah, quarterly. Revisit the major changes and the purpose.

Okay. Do you want to. Can you relist those 4Ps again? Just so people make sure they get it?

Testing me.

Yeah, I love it. Yeah.

So people, productivity, profitability, and presence.

Okay. I love it. I want to bring it also to my team. So selfishly, I want to make sure it's honed in on my head. If you have any type of, you know, like, resources or anything, too, I'll link them in the show notes. I think that this is hugely helpful for people, especially for those that are wanting to scale or are in that kind of season of transformation, and I think that's massive. So I know you kind of talked to us about, you know, with those 4Ps and with changes, how important is, like, transparency to your team? Because I think a lot of times, like you said, leaders maybe will make this change. They have gone through the 4Ps. They understand that they're all on board, but they lack that communication to the team. So the team is like, gosh, you're just asking me to change again, when in reality, without the framework around that. So can you kind of walk us through how to effectively communicate to your team and the importance of transparency?

Yeah, no, that's super important. And you know this. And that's where the fatigue comes in. Like, oh, they're asking me to never.

Change with no backstory. Yeah, yeah.

Like, what's going on? I'm. I'm constantly being asked to change. The ground is constantly moving. I can't. I cannot stand straight. Right. Like, I'm buckling. So you know, again, the communication. I'm going to go back to the whiteboards, the electronic whiteboard. The, you know, whether it's a monthly or quarterly meeting, just can repet. Repetition is super important. So if you can put it out there on a whiteboard, if you can put it in a team meeting at least once a month or once a quarter, that's more than most businesses are doing, to be honest with you. They're just, I don't want to set the bar so high to make it unrealistic. I'm sure there's other businesses that could say, we do this every week. God love you. Go for it. But.

Right, yeah, I think it'd be almost too repetitive at that point because it would just be like, okay, cool. And then almost as loose as the stigma of, like, this is important because it's like, gosh, we're just doing it again this week. Like, check it off, call it a day. You know, that's. That's a big piece. So.

That's right. I would say. I'll tell you what we do here. Now we're all. Nobody's on site. And so in our actual master Asana board that we have to use Asana, there is literally a team. There's a task milestone. And in it has team agenda and documents. And in there, the document has the goals, love has the massive changes. So if they forget. Because, by the way, we can't take in information when it's set in the moment, we take it in when we can take it in. So leaving it available for them to look at offline, night, weekend, whenever they want. That's what's so important. I'm not a big fan of when companies do like a big company meeting and they have a deck and then they don't leave it open and shared all the time.

Yeah, they just put it away for the next quarterly meeting. Yeah, Yeah, I feel that, yeah, it has to be visuals to the team. I think that's important too, because we do a lot of quarterly meetings, but I think the visualization of it and the understanding and like the reaching back to goals is huge. So this is, this is a good one for me personally. So I'm like, yes, tell me.

I know, but I want to ask you what you see because honestly, what you see is a lot too. This is the psychology of growth and making hard decisions. How important? You know, I. I guess if I could turn for a second. I know you have your questions, but, yeah, I love it when you are showing visuals. What are you discovering? What Are the clients discovering massive?

So I think we have kind of two sectors of clients and I would say there are some that are in there in their trackers every single week. We recommend that when we give them dashboards, we're like, don't just look at the dashboards, use the dashboards. I think there's such a key piece there. It's not just knowing the numbers, it's understanding the numbers. And there's this massive kind of misstep there because it's like, gosh, I know what my ROI is, but you understand what's making up that roi, you know, and even we even say ROI is not one of the top five things we've attracted. There's so much before that that happens that realistically, if you're not doing steps A through, you know, Y, you're not going to hit Z. Z is your roi. That's your end goal. So I always say too, like, yes, there are some that are looking at it every single week. There are others that look at it quarterly and they reach out to us for coaching, which I think is awesome because a lot of times they're like, gosh, I have these. I don't understand them. Can you translate this for me? And I think that that's a massive thing that we can help people with is it's not just knowing your numbers. It's really getting in the weeds and, and understanding it and saying, okay, is this. Am I going to make the actions needed for this to become my outcome? And again, reverse engineering it. I think that's a massive theme and giving people that freedom to make changes because of the numbers. You know, we oftentimes have to. But I also say get to be a little bit of the bad guy because we're coming in and saying this is not working for you based on the numbers. And the advisors are going, gosh, I've known this for a long time, but I just never wanted to move away from it because I didn't know it in a numbers data metric format. So I always just am a big proponent. Look at your numbers, make decisions by your numbers because at the end of the day that that's going to be a big thing.

So, yeah, I think it takes some of the emotion out in the ego. And I don't mean ego in a greedy way, by the way. I just mean the actual ego. Eagle, if you guys, people that read understand what I'm saying that you're so right. And also I listen, I don't know about you, but I'm attached to My business. My business is my baby. Even when I'm looking at stuff, I can't see it clearly with no emotion. So, yeah, I love that you. I love that you have two options, but I also love that quarterly cadence.

Yeah. Yeah. I think too, like, for where your services really come in is having that third party perspective. That is huge. And having someone come in and say, hey, this is what I'm seeing. I've done this a lot before. I'm wanting to help your business, knowing I'm on your side. But, like, there are changes that need to be made and like, let's implement that. And I think that's too like a lot of the aha moments that you probably get in workshops. Like, can you walk us through maybe some of those common. Like, oh my gosh, yes. Like, you're. You're so cramped. Like, for me it's the four P's. I'm like, gosh, I need to implement that tomorrow. But what are some of the things that you just feel like really help clients that maybe are actionable items today for advisors?

Yeah. I found one of the biggest aha moments is when we do the authority chart and they find that their names are in like most of the boxes.

Yeah. Yeah.

One of those things where I don't have to say a word. I just want to say like, oh my God, no wonder. Yeah. So that's, you know, that's a huge one to do. That exercise is. Is absolutely. That's pivotal. The other one in tying into your calculator. The aha moment of where I am today, where I want to be, and that middle section, you know, that napkin growth calculation. Huge. Absolutely huge.

Yeah. I think those are, those three things are massive for any organization. Not just advisors, but knowing and understanding, like the roles and everything. So I think too, like a lot of times, you know, not every advisor's goal is just to scale. It also is a bit of a legacy goal and an impact goal. And I love the financial advisory space for this. That it is very driven by the need and want to help people. And that's a massive thing. So how should leaders think differently if they want a business to outlast them versus they maybe just want this kind of more smaller scale shop. Is there a certain mindset that you recommend to build that kind of legacy goal?

Yeah, I'm gonna borrow from strategic Coach, but it's called like self managing company.

Right.

Whether you're small or big, to build legacy, you have to be able to take a month off and know the business can Run without you? Yeah. Okay. With the same theme. So test it out with two days off and then three days off. And really, that's how you make it a legacy firm. You test it, and you slowly build toward that. And the words out of your mouth among your team are, we are part of your mission. We're building a legacy. We're building a legacy and say over and over, because sometimes you may say it and not even believe it yet, or you might not even know what that means. But I think to practice saying that, yeah, that's huge.

And getting your team on board with that, like, we're all in this together and building this legacy and not just, you know, going through things. So I think that that's huge. So I think you do a lot of other talks. We focus a lot today on scaling, but you do a lot, you know, of other things. What are some other kind of practical ways that people can build a good, solid business? Is there any other, like, talks that you want to touch on or any other kind of pieces of advice you have for advisors?

I would say the theme for the last year has been around communication. So if I could just. Yes. And very much encourage clear communication between team members. Managing up, managing down, managing across. So I'm going to make it real simple. When you want something done, you write the four W's. So this is a Toyota thing that I took away. You write the what, the why, the who, and the when. Every time you write something to somebody else.

Okay.

I think we're rushing. I know. It's normal. We're stressed. Very normal. Especially now. Just put your four W's in your communications and that will. That's a game changer.

Okay.

As well.

Okay.

Yeah. What else? My God, communication. I think we covered that with all the visuals. Take a vacation.

Yeah. I love that. I think it's so hard.

Literally, we put it on the strategy board because they're like, I don't know if I can do that. And I'm like, you want to see if this will work. You want to get your team, Empower your team. Let's go. You're burning out. It's quite clear. Like, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And remove yourself out of the equation. You know what I mean? And then I also think, like, even if it fails and feel forward, just say, okay, these are the things that were missed. You wouldn't have known that if you didn't step away for a second. And at the end of the day, it helps you. You potentially the family that it's going to really help and it's. You're going to help your firm family as well. Like really understand. Okay, I need to do XYZ better because that's not going to fly when they're so and so's gone. So. Yeah.

And let me just ground this one. The industry of financial services, the revenue still flows when you're out of the office.

Yeah. Isn't that amazing? I know, I mean, right, you and.

I know there's other business models out there where when you are not working, you're not not getting paid. Guess what? You don't have that you have, you have a wonderful opportunity to lead by gamble. And let's just take it even further. You're not just leading by example among your team and the business, but all the clients are watching and those clients run businesses or they're part of businesses. Like the viral trickle effect of giving forward and showing by example is just incredible.

And giving your freedom for the team. Like you said, the triple effect, like it's okay. You know, I think we. So I love this about the European mindset as well is I have a lot of family over there. So they do six weeks of vacation every single year and it's for everybody. And this is just like very common and normal and it's nothing. I love America. It's nothing against America. I just feel like in this kind of, we're in this mindset of like we have to always work. Like that is our only goal in life. We have to be continuously working. And I love the concept of like taking, taking a break, like allowing your business to run like yes, serving your clients and doing good for them, but they also want that for you. And I think that there's a lot to be learned from that, you know, understanding of rest, you know, just being okay with doing nothing, you know, and it's, it's difficult tasks for a lot of people, but there's, there's joy and beauty in that. So kind of last question we talk about at the Advisor Summit is tracking. You know, we're big into like the adventure of the spirit. But where are you tracking today? Personally, professionally? Do you have any big goals you want to accomplish this year? Anything that you're kind of feeling is your goal for 20, 25, maybe even next quarter.

You're going to hold me accountable right now. Recording. I know. No, listen, as I mentioned offline, I mean we are definitely scaling to the next level. I've done this once before. I'm an empty nester. Anybody wants to know that as of a week ago, Congrats So our goal really is to double our team and to double our impact. And what I mean by impact is I started this and I pulled away. So I'm going to hold myself accountable. We love giving forward to charity and so we were publicly tracking it and now we pulled back. But we're going to do it again and we're going to track it in time and money. So I'm hoping to get to that before the end of the year.

Yeah, I love that. What a kind goal. And I think it's just your heart, you know, not only for the culture of your team, but also for your culture of your values and what you believe in. And I think that is so kind. So is there any specific charity that you're like, looking toward getting to, whether it's time or money or is there a main theme or concept? Or are you like, we want to help everybody?

No, I did want to help everybody, but I had to narrow it down when I worked on my own exit strategy work. So long story short, it's food insecurity. And I actually am transforming a food bank to triple the number of families from 400 to 1200. But yeah, I just might be doing it on a much larger scale than expected and then, and maybe more of the state level. So we'll see, we'll see what comes up.

My cup's full. Just hearing that, I feel like that's so needed. And I do feel like it's this mentality. We've been given so much and it's not, we need to give back like that. Just at the end of the day, if every one of us even listened to, I mean, if you can listen to a podcast, you've been given a lot. So regardless if it's, it's not always monetary. It's very time efficient also. So we love it. I mean, there's some. There's actually a food bank and we have three and five year old boys and they will allow them to come and fill food even at such a young age. And it is so interesting to watch even the transformation of our three year olds who's, you know, very young, doesn't really understand the concepts, but to watch them understand, like, we need to give back and we need to help people and it's so cool. So I even think, just as anybody listening to this, if you can take one thing from Jen, it is to have a servant's heart and to help other people. So that's awesome. I'm excited for you. I'm rooting for you, Jen. Thank you for coming on. I think this was so helpful for so many team members, and I'm just really excited to see and watch you thrive. And I'm so rooting for you. So we love you.

Likewise. Thanks for all the great questions.

Of course. We'll chat soon. Thanks for coming.