Ep #6: How Metrics Transformed Our Business Strategy

Welcome to the Advisor Summit, the podcast where financial advisors gain analytical insights and tactical strategies from the industry's top minds. Each episode we bring you exclusive conversations with founders, C suite leaders and industry innovators, uncovering the trends, tools and techniques shaping the future of financial advising. Whether you're looking to scale your practice, enhance client relationships, or or stay ahead of market trends, the Advisor Summit is your go to source for expert guidance and actionable takeaways. Hello. We are so excited to welcome Anthony Socaro, the president and CEO of Providence Financial, to the Advisor Summit. Thanks for coming on. I'm so excited to have a conversation today with you.

I am as well, Erica. Thank you for having me.

So we're going to have go through several questions. It's kind of a quick, short format of a podcast, but we will run through them. And as we talked about earlier earlier, I'm a big believer in being authentic and answering things truly and how it's felt. And we're going to talk a little bit about your relationship with us and how the first year has gone, all the bumps along the way and also the awesome stuff that we provide. But before we get started, I would love to hear from you just how did you get into the industry? What are some of your huge goals for your company? Tell us a little bit about, about Providence and you and where you're headed.

Yeah, thank you for asking. And I gotta say too that I love the idea of this podcast because, you know, when first started, especially if I could hear stories of other advisors and what they went through, I just think it would be hugely valuable. And even now, one of the favorite things I like to do on a much higher level is listen to founders of other companies, how they got started, what their background was. Because, you know, you tend to look at the, the founders, Jeff Bezos even on a much, much higher level and you know, Facebook founder. And you, you know, when you hear those stories, you realize it wasn't just all yo quiche and roses, you know, so the. So I do appreciate you asking me able to share. I've been a financial advisor for 25 years. I started off in the insurance industry as a salesperson. I primarily was selling annuities. And that was it. It was all about, you know, if I, if I sold something today, I got to eat tomorrow and if I didn't sell something today, I didn't get to eat tomorrow. And yet I, you know, one thing I've always had is that go getter attitude where I would be the one to go get it and it meant that I had to make a bunch of cold calls, phone calls. I actually use the white pages, if you remember what those are. You know, I actually use the white pages and, and just started going down the list of names. Then I figured, you know, I found out that if I could spend $1,000 on a mailer company back then they would send a mailer and offer something, free report or something. And for every thousand dollars I got, you know, 10 to 20 responses back, people requesting this report, I would call them and no one would answer. And so then I realized that the best way to go out and start to get some traction would be to show up at their door. And you know, one, the first thing I learned as a, essentially a door to door salesperson is the first thing they do is when they crack the door open that much is, you know, you put your foot in the door so they can't close it on you. And I'm not getting this is, this was 25 years ago, but this was introduction. It was, but, you know, but the reality is this is how I started and I found something to sell and I was just so doggedly persistent. I remember at one point that it was my goal, I was not going to finish the day until I had 10 people open the door and that was it. And that led to one sale after another. And eventually it, that was the foundations. I did that from 1999 until 2006. 2006, the scariest two things I've ever done in my career. And I did them both at the same time. Absolutely terrified. I got my own office. And so I, I would have been going door to door and seeing people elsewhere before then. And I hired my first employee prior to that. What I, what I realized I was doing is I would, I would work a week and make a bunch of phone calls and schedule appointments for the following week. And then that following week I would see a bunch of people and then I was out of people. And so the following week, then I would. So it was every other week, calls and then seeing people calls and then seeing people. And something dawned on me like, well, what if I actually had someone else make the call so I could see people four weeks out of the year?

Yeah.

And so that's what I wound up doing, hiring someone. And it, it was the scariest decision, but the best decision that was in 06. And then from 06 to here we are now 20 years later. You know, it's, it's just continued to grow. And now I'm at the point where we're hiring advisors, and I'm now training and mentoring advisors. So that's a little bit about my background. I, I started off selling insurance, mostly annuities. 2006, I got my Series 65 license, became a registered investment advisor, started learning that side of the business, which I had never done. 2011 had accumulated $500,000 in assets under management. I mean, that's whopping 500, 000. Not 500 million, not $5,500,000 because I didn't know what I was doing.

Yeah.

And at the early stages, I was so scared to invest money. I had a rule that if I'm going to take you on as a client, it's going to be. You're going to be such a small client to where if I lose all your money, you can't sue me because the last 13 years. So it's, it's been great. So, you know, that's, that's our practice.

Yeah, you've had huge success. I mean, and we again, have just started coming in to help. Help look through all of that. But I mean, you are growing. You're still in growth mode. I mean, and also your story, I think when you get to this size, your team doesn't know the story. Right. Like what you have went through and how you really started. And they see you being successful now and having all these processes in place. But the truth is, many years ago, it started just knocking on doors, which is very scary. And I say it all the time, advisors have the thickest skin. You guys get told no more often than you get told. Yes. Which is why I think your breed of people are just amazing. I'm just amazed by what you guys do and your resiliency. So you're still growing, but you're a process guy as much as you're a sales guy. And as hungry as you are for leads and as hungry as you are for growth, growth, you also believe in processes. So talk to me about your. That balance there. You know, you have to have them to grow. I've seen it. That was some of our first conversations when we started working together. But you're also very hungry. So how do you balance? Knowing processes are important, but also that you sometimes have to pour fuel on a fire?

Yeah, well, the bigger I become, the more we've grown, the more processes become important. Everything today should be processized. I don't know if that's a word about process signs, but anyway, yeah, it should be a process. Every. Everything down from the very minutia of when someone Calls in, where do they go? How do they get spoken to, you know, when they get on the calendar. And we have a lot of processes in place. I'll give you just a couple of examples. When someone comes in, part of our process for the first time when they come in our office is do not put them in the conference room right away. Let them sit in our lobby for five or 10 minutes. And the reason is because when you go into an environment, whether it's a doctor or dentist, and you're not new and it's the first time you're seeing it, you want to get somewhat accustomed to. And in our office, we have what I call the I Love me wall, which the, you know, with a lot of the media interviews that I've been quoted in and printed in, so people can kind of look at that and read that and kind of get a feel for what's going on. And then we have the I Love me sizzle reel, which is, you know, all the media interviews I've done on TV and my radio show and everything else, and that's all playing on the. On the tv. So they have to be able to sit there to absorb some of that stuff. Because a lot of times when they come in, I mean, we know us really well, but they might not know who we are, you know, as well. So we want them, after sitting in the lobby for five or 10 minutes, intentionally sitting in the lobby, we want them to look around and go, how come I didn't know who they were? Because they seem to be everywhere. So it starts in that lobby. And that's our process. It's so easy for someone to come in and for the advisor to want to see them right away, that the receptionist then takes them and puts them in the conference room or puts them in the day office or brings them to the advisor's office without letting them have that ambiance to kind of build themselves. So it's that. That's just one little example of, you know, what a process is and how. Process, you know, how the. How the entire process can help you overall. So we are process driven. It didn't always start that way, for sure. When I was trying to, you know, feed my family in the early days, there was really no process. It was just me going out and calling on people and knocking on doors. The one thing that I will say that I. I did fairly early on, and I did it for years and years, maybe even. Maybe even a decade, maybe the first 10 years of my career, but really, really, really helped me. I mean, like, really helped me. And that is that, you know, a lot of times, you know, salespeople will tend to do what it is they're comfortable doing and they tend to avoid what it is they're not comfortable doing. So what I realize is that it's a lot easier to say you're going to do something before you do it. And, and let me rephrase that. The farther out you say you're going to do something, the easier it is to make a commitment. You know, I could make, I could make a commitment to you that I'm going to do this, you know, in, in two months from now. But if I say I'm going to do this tomorrow, that's harder. Or if I say I'm going to do this next today, that's harder. The farther out it is, it's easier to make the commitment. So what I realized very early on is, is I would spend a half hour to an hour every night. It seems like a ridiculous amount of time, but it was well worth it. I would spend a half hour to an hour every, every night with a yellow pad and I would Write down in 5 minute increments what I'm going to do the next day. And I had it all listed down. I'm going to make this phone call to this person here. I'm going to make this phone call to this person. It was literally person by person. I'm going to go knock on 10 doors, give myself a four hour block to go do that. And I knew what I was going to do. And if you, you know, when you do that and you're disciplined enough and you have to be committed to yourself, if you, you can't commit to yourself, who can you commit to? No one's going to believe you if you can't keep commitments to yourself. So I made commitments to myself that this is what I was going to do. And I followed it. And oftentimes when I knew that there were things that needed to get done, what it did is it would help me structure my day. I would, it was very frequent. Like almost every time that I would get at the end of my time and I would go back and look at my to do list, I go, that's got to be done tomorrow. It's not on there. That's got to be done tomorrow. It's not on there. What can I swap out? And I would literally go write the whole thing again. So by the time I was done, I had wadded up yellow pads, papers, thrown them in the trash can and finally got to the point where I'm like, that's my perfect day tomorrow. And sometimes it would take me an hour. And it was frustrating and I hated it. But it's part of what launched us to where we are. And now I train advisors to do that and I train support staff. So when I have a support staff member that is having a difficult time, this is what we do. Go write it down.

Prioritize. Yes, 100%. We call that the North Star. Like, you know, my team, like, I have 17 things to do. I can't do them all. I'm like, well, let's go north to south. Like, what, what'? So very well done. And it, and it shows in your office. So let's talk about tracking because processes are important to you. We hopped on a call about a year ago. Ish. And you just said, hey, like, I run really well processes, but I need to use the data, I need to use it to make decisions. And then we kind of went down our partnership and talk to me a little bit about that, like inviting somebody into that space to analyze numbers. Do we trust the numbers? Do we not trust the numbers? How has it been for your team to like start seeing these things on paper? We're going to talk about like the team's response to how that worked, but just talk about the initial idea of bringing in a company to start tracking your data and telling you about it. How did you feel, you know, were the reservations or where did, where was your head with all of that?

Yeah, so the way that I was introduced to TTA is through a friend I was having. I wound up being in Nashville. He lives in Nashville. He's a super successful advisor that you would know. He's been a TTA client for years and literally he had his computer there and just popped it up and showed me. And I had been using metrics. This was not the first time I was familiar with metrics. It's just CTA did a lot more than what, what I had been doing and gave me a lot more information than what I had been doing. So when I saw it, I just fell in love. And I, I mean, I don't think a week went by before I actually became a client client after that particular. Yeah, I mean, it was very, very quick. My team, when I introduced it to them, I mean, they know that I'm a process driven guy. They know that I'm a metrics driven guy. They didn't have any problem with it. But we had to develop processes. There's that keyword we had to develop processes to make sure that the information gets incorrectly. And that's been. I want to say it's been a challenge. It hasn't been an overwhelming challenge. It hasn't been something that's not overcomeable. But we have had times to figure out who's going to do what. And, you know, right now, if I were to try to tell you what that process is, I. I'd fail because I'm not a part of that process. I don't. I don't put anything in there, and I don't tell them. I mean, I do tell them. I don't want to put anything in there.

Or should you? Yep.

Yeah. It's not my role. So I'm not exactly sure what our process is. But the reality is, I guess when you have processes, the whole point of processes is that the, you know, owner, CEO, president doesn't have to know what they are. I can't know every process, but what I do is, is when I see something break down or when I see some information that I want that I don't have, or something that's not there. Pending people are oftentimes still pending when they're not pending. And I've had to go back multiple times to my staff and go, why is that person still pending? Because they're not still pending. And so, you know, so the reality is that's an upgrade of the process. So because of this, because of this, and now it's my job to fix the process, or it's my job to let the manager of that department know this is what needs to be fixed. You fixed it. Because I want the information. And next time I look at this column, it better be all current. So the staff likes it to a degree. They know that I like it. That means that they like it. They know that they get bonuses based on our production. They know it makes us more efficient. They know that we can't track numbers without it. We can't track marketing methods without it. So everyone likes it. But, you know, I'll be honest, putting the work in and developing the process to get to this point's tedious.

Yep.

But once you're, you know, once you're there, it's worth it. And I don't even know how to define there because I almost virtually, you know, virtually no time do I go in when I don't have additional questions about things. But, you know, what I really like is that I can fire a question. I use a lot of loom videos, and instead of me sending questions directly to you or directly to tta. I usually go through one of my managers because I know that if I go directly to tta, then there's going to be a response back. And I don't have time for the back and forth. I will give it to my manager and go, hey, this is what I want. Find it out, get the answer, get back to me, and I eliminate all that back and forth in between. And I've been told by my staff, the people who handle this, that they, you guys are super responsive. You've never said no. So, you know, so sometimes there is some confusion, but my team members like it because they know that I, you know, I like it. And we've got our process dialed down to where it's really not cumbersome at this point. But, you know, we had to, we had to develop a process to get there.

You do. And, and to your point that it may not ever get there. It's true. And I tell people that all the time. They're like, well, when is it going to be done? And I say it's going to change every year. Like, what, what mattered? And for us to look at in 2024 might be a completely moot point in 2025. So now we got to go look at this other stuff. And that's, that is tracking. It's, it is a, it's movement and it is continual and it never really ends as much as people want it to. I mean, and you, you understand that. I think it's hard for the team sometimes. Like, man, I feel like we're constantly changing and we're constantly, I'm like, well, that's, that's, that's the deal. That's the deal with tracking. So. And it is hard and it is tedious, but what it does do, and you said this too, and I agree with you, it forces you, whether it's you or your team, to create a process for something. There's so many offices that we go into, and yours was the least of them actually, that don't have a process. Like, they don't even know where to find something. Right. So we have to go back to square one to say, okay, where do we find this person? Or how do we know who gets the information to know if they're qualified or not or whatever it is. And so I want to give a kudos and gold star to you guys because it was. As much as you do feel like it keeps changing, from our end, things were pretty well squared away. There are a few conversations have to happen, but it wasn't a train wreck. So well done on a lot of it. So the becoming better. So we're going to talk about this, right? I want honest feedback and I think it's good for the world to know. Whoever listens to this on what TTA or tracking in general, what you're receiving, what your team is doing, how can we be better? How are you using this platform? What do you love about it? What are things that you're like, hey, this would be a wish list that you don't have. These are questions that we get all the time from people, and we're using this podcast as a space to answer those questions for people. So from a live client, what do you love? What are you getting? Are you getting the stuff that your friend from Nashville had? Are you getting more than that? And then where is it? Where is it lacking? What would be a dream list for 2025, 2026 for you?

Yeah. No, good question. So what I love is the fact that you guys will customize it the way that we want. That's one of the things that's huge. But you guys have a phenomenal base, you know, phenomenal starting point, which is something that I couldn't even put together as well, too. And so it's a great starting point. And then you will customize it. We have not customized it to the degree that I think we can, and that's something that, you know, I'll mention in a few minutes, but I was having conversations with some friends of mine, so I actually referred to you guys. I've referred multiple advisors to you, but this particular couple signed on and they were talking to me about some of the customizations they've done. And I was like, yeah, that would be cool. I really want that. So I, I haven't utilized you to the degree that they have. What I, what I think could be easier is I'm good at looking at the numbers, but I'm really not good at translating the numbers.

Totally.

And you helped me with that in a call that we did, you know, and, and help me put the numbers. And it's like, it's almost like looking at an X ray, you know, if you, you know, if you've ever had an X ray of a body part because it was sore, and the doctor took an X ray and then he puts it on the board and you're looking at it, you don't. Unless you're a doctor, you don't understand what it says. The doctor comes in and goes, yeah, look at this. There's this little hairline fracture, there's a little hairline crack. And now all of a sudden, when the doctor explains it now it makes a lot of sense and you're like, oh, yeah, how come I didn't see that? Same, same thing with an ultrasound. Right. I remember when we had our ultrasound with our second child. It was a, you know, ultrasound and, and the doctor was like, yeah, there, and it's going to be a boy and blah, blah, and pointing out all the stuff and is pointing out the, you know, little points and things that make it a boy. And I'm trying to find the baby.

Totally.

I mean, it says, it looks like the Milky Way to me.

Right.

And it's the same thing with the metrics. It's all there, but I don't have, I can't translate it. And when you, you know, I'd come in and basically walk through and, and pointed out all the, you know, the, the, the prospect, the prospect journey, the advisor journey, the source journey, that journey, that's something I never looked at for the last year. And because we had that conversation about it, I now look at it and what I thought was good was not good and interesting. Your timing was, your timing was very interesting and very good in, in my world because I had had about two months before you and I kind of went through that translation. Call if you wanted. Yeah. The reality is I had someone tell me your closing ratios are not good. Someone else then the second person told me your closing ratio is not good. I then had a third and a fourth person tell me your closing ratio is not good. Not me, but my advisors and, but I didn't really know why. And you came in and all the metrics, you said this is why. And the reason is because we're trying to push people to second and third meetings that don't even qualify and should never have gone to a, never have gone to a second meeting. And we're pushing people to become clients. We're not drawing them in to become clients. And it was the metrics that really tied all that together as to why our closing ratios weren't good. And it's, it's, it's, it was amazing how, you know, how the, how the prospect journey story really tied it all together in, in our situation. So it was, it was a phenomenal kind of an aha moment that shouldn't have been, but it was. But to answer your question, you know, I, I, I wish it was easier for me to come to that conclusion on my own and not a quarter later.

That's Right.

That's right. Not having to have a phone call to do that not a year after we did it. You know as well too another thing that's on my wish list and you guys are going to get something from me soon asking for this. I don't know if it's possible but I have several processes. Sales trainers, mentors. I'm a big believer in that. And one of the sales trainers we've given access to tti. I love the fact too that you'll let me give access to other people who can help me translate this stuff and you know the doctors who can look at that and go this pretty simple, look at this. And that's what they do. But one of the trainers basically said look, what you need to do in your system is you need the process so refined that you know how many calls an appointment setter has to make. We've got two appointment setters on our team. That's all they do. You need to have your process so refined so that so that you know how many calls an appointment, etc. Has to make per marketing method, per advisor, per time period to get to a close. And we have all the data. We've got our appointment center data and tta. We know they're making calls, we know who they're calling, we know what that can go pull all that up and we know what our closes are. So something that I'm going to come back and ask you guys is how do we do this, how do we get it so defined and what information do we need that we don't have to. Where we can go back and, and say this is how many appointments this is, this is how many people and appointment center needs to call to come out with one close on the other end. Because once you can go that process then it's just a matter of how do we get them more phone calls and that's just a matter of marketing.

Yep.

You know, and so when we hire advisors we can put more dollars at it and we can get more people for them to call and eventually we'll have to hire another appointments headed. We just hired our second appointments out of three months ago and we'll have to hire a third and a fourth and a fifth. But that's something that I'm going to be looking for you guys too. And I don't even know if that's possible.

It is, it is, I can tell you that. I mean I think we have something really similar for another office. But that's why I love the math right like, that is why this stuff is so cool. Because once you have, like you said, I know we have it, right? Like, I know we have and everyone knows, like, hey, I know we have it somewhere in the Milky Way, to use your word. We just need to do a few more things or make another constellation, right? Like, we need to connect these dots over here. So, yes, email my team. They can totally help you do that. But that also speaks to again, because you're a process driven product person. You're thinking that way of like, hey, I want to do X amount of business, but I know foreclose rates. This and our average case size is this. Because that's something that we give you. Therefore you need to make X amount of calls. And what a cool thing for your team. Like, expectations are massive for them to know exactly what's expected of them in order for everyone to hit their goal. And they can feel empowered in doing that and have control over that. Does he have to make.

Yeah, 100%. What frustrated me was the fact that I didn't even think about it. I needed a coach to tell me, this is what you need to do. I was talking with one of my coaches, one of my sales coaches and, and basically saying, these are my metrics. And I had two, two word document pages. I had marketing, I had my advisors, I had the ratios, I had the phone calls I need to make to get. I had to close ad everything beautiful. And I go, but what frustrates me, what's. What the problem is, is it took me hours. I mean, literally, I think the hours probably has turned into days and maybe weeks. I mean, literally, I've spent months going through coming up with the exact metrics. And he said to me, goes, why do you have to do all that work? Why can't TTA do all that work? Why can't you just not. Why do you have to do all the work and take all the pieces and put it and take. And I was like, why didn't I think of that? Like a month.

I don't know why. Yeah, yeah. And that's a, that's a good question. I know last year at one point, and I should talk to the team about doing it, is they did like a webinar on all the different ways that, that our clients are using the platform. Right. And so that, you know, could be something too where it's like, hey, this is how so and so is using. And this is how so and so does reverse engineered marketing. Because you don't know what you don't know. That's, I mean, that's why is because you don't really think about it until you've sat there and done all this time. And that's how Tract Advisor was born in the first place, is people are taking hours and hours and hours and days of doing something. But definitely worth asking. So email our team on that one. So let's talk about the annual review. I mean, you kind of already mentioned that, but the, the analysis, the data story, which is kind of our language for that. I like how you put that of like a doctor coming into an ultrasound, and that's how I feel sometimes too, is that we're coming in and I'm so used to it, looking a certain way and I'm so used to all these things. So to me it's just second nature. And for those, for you, it's kind of like, oh my gosh, you know, I didn't see this. And so you opened that door. I want to talk a little bit about you pushing people to the second meeting. It was a great strategy. You're not alone in that. A lot of advisors do that. Talk to me about how that has gone and how you've changed process a little bit. Because what we did discover, you guys did a phenomenal job. I mean, you guys were pushing nearly 100%, which to you is like, this is awesome. You know, we're doing it. One, swallowing that pill, right? For me to come in and say what you think is great isn't awesome, therefore this is low. How do you respond to that? And then tell me what you guys have done from a process standpoint to start getting that moving the right direction.

Yeah. What's interesting, you were a number of steps down the line from where we had actually started. I'd realized that there were some issues. I didn't know where the issues were. So I had several coaches and I've got, literally I've got one, two, I've got three coaches in different arenas that all that all helped me. One of them is a sales coach and that's what he talks about. And one of the first conversations I had when I started having this problem a couple months before you and I connected on the annual review is the fact that we need to start disqualifying people instead of qualifying them. And at the same time that he was teaching me this, I went to a sales training, a two day sales training, myself and maybe eight or ten other guys. And that individual was using the idea of the fact that, you know, if someone is drowning and you've Got the life ring. They're not going to be asking you what the brand is of the life ring or what the color of the boat is that you're going to pull them into because they realize they have a problem. And, and as soon as they start asking you about your fees and how long have you been in the business and you know, what about this and what about they don't have a problem. And the whole point of sales is to identify a problem that you can help them solve. And what we've learned through the several sales events that I've been to through my sales trainers, we've learned that what we've been trying to do is trying to push people down underwater to create a problem so that we can then throw them our solution. And that's not necessarily the right way. We need to find the people with the problem. And the reality is when we, when I had heard that multiple times from multiple sources over the two month period leading up to our review and, and I don't mind talking about our review, you know, our review, you had basically said that our first meeting scheduled percentage rate is phenomenal. We're getting people to the first meeting. They're not canceling. We're above benchmark when it is first meeting. But what's supposed to happen from the first meeting, the second meeting, second meeting is we're supposed to DQ people from the first meeting. We're not. We need to identify the people who are really potential clients in the first meeting and not all of them are going to be potential clients. And I think your benchmark is like 60% if I remember right, of the people that 65. So people that keep the first meeting, only 65% of those should be people that go to a second meeting. While my advisors, the percentage was 80 and 90% which means we're pushing all the wrong people. And the person to blame for that is me because I'm the one that was training the advisors pre tta, pre our call, which only happened within the last two months. I think you'll pre our call. My teaching and my training of advisors was if they come to a first meeting, you want to get, most of those people should come to a second meeting. You should have like 90% of those people show up for a second meeting and through the entire process. And then you were the, you were the linchpin, you were the caboose on this entire train that basically said no, you don't want that. And the light bulb went on and, and, and I went back to the advisors. I Go. Hey guys, sorry, what I've been teaching you is wrong. So the practical outcome of that is one of my sales trainers that, that teaches this teaches how to sell, but from a non sales example, how to ask more questions, how to get people to discover that they have a problem, how to make, how to take a problem and make them realize that the problem is really bigger than they think. And then, and then don't sell a solution until you actually have the problem and ask more questions. And you know all the things about the fact that you know if you're talking, you can't be listening and 70% of the time you should be listening. The other 30% of the time that you, that you should be, you should be talking. And you know, you, you, you always want to seek to understand the other person before you seek to, to be understood. And, and all of that process that I've been training, that I've been going through that culminated in the fact that, okay, you guys showed me that we, we are trying to push people across to paradise island and not beyond paradise island, calling them. It's the wrong way to do it. That has led to me signing up my advisors in the same sales process which is a year long sales thing. And I will, I'm now tangibly put my advisors in the sales training and they're learning it so that I don't have to be the one to teach them because apparently I wasn't teaching them well.

Well yeah, but we're all learning, right? I mean that's the journey. That's the whole point of the whole thing. And I love that. And I love that you're pivoting. That's there, there's always going to be pivoting and we call it the top three turns. Like there's just, there's always going to be turning. But I'm excited, I'm excited to just kind of see how it all plays with the day. That's my favorite part about, is like we can go back and see how everything shifts and changes from there. So well done on, on you know, making that connection. And it sounds like there was a lot of people just along the way that have helped, helped with that process. But as we wrap up, I have two more questions. The first one is advisors who aren't looking at metrics. What would you say when is a good time to start? Like some of these are just single producing advisors. They don't even have staff. When is a good time to start looking at metrics and not even track that advisor track that Advisor does exist for kind of the larger offices. We're doing multiple sources, multiple advisors. But from your standpoint, starting with knocking at doors, when is a good time for them to start really paying attention to the prospect story or something more than just new business written?

Yeah, I think, I think you want to start right away because if you plan on growing your practice, you know, the reality is that you're going to have to keep track of metrics. Like we're at a point where I would just have no idea how to run anything or make decisions if it wasn't for metrics. Just because of where we are and we're not a fraction of where we're going to be, you know, so, but so it would be easier to grow in. I really didn't start keeping metrics until maybe four years ago or so. You think about a 25 year career. Not really keeping metrics until four years ago, just kind of going by pulse. One of the first things that I did not with TTA when I started keeping metrics and I had another coach at the time kind of translate some of the metrics into me, he showed me that there was one marketing method we were using using that was my radio show that was producing nothing pretty much. And like the moment I realized that, the moment I canceled the show and I saved $60,000 that year, I literally as a result of that, I didn't know that it wasn't producing anything.

Yeah.

So, you know, that's. And right now if you look at our marketing methods, we probably have 15 different marketing methods that track, that advisor tracks. I think we've been told by you guys that we have one of the more extensive list than most advisors out there. Because we do. And how would I know what's not? Right now, as I'm really diving into metrics, there are some, some things that I'm, you know, trying to consider, do I want to take off our plate, Do I not want to take off our plate as a result of the metrics? Early on though, it's not about, you know, when you're a solo practitioner or you're a solo practitioner with one assistant, it's you. It's not going to be about how many marketing methods do you have and which ones work. And because you're, you're not doing that, you kind of know what works and you're, you know, scraping by on a budget. You're not rich, you're trying to go out, you kind of know which ones are working, which ones aren't. But what I think that you may not know is you may not understand the value of the metrics for the purpose of following up in the future and what clients to stay with and what clients not to stay with. It's so easy to get duped by clients. You know, you, you get off the phone with the client who said, yeah, I love everything you say. It's so phenomenal. I think it makes sense. Let me just think about it. Let me talk to my wife and then I'll get back to you, AKA I'm not interested, and I'm never going to call you.

You're going to be chasing me for seven months.

That's exactly right. And you have to realize that. And when you look at the metrics, when you start keeping metrics now, a year is going to go by so fast. I mean, you have to have at least a quarter of metrics. I'm going to say you have to have at least a year's metric. So when we started it in 2023, we, we got used to it in the last quarter of 2023. It was kind of our practice to develop our processes. 2024 was our serious. I glanced at it in 2024, Erica. I didn't start using it really until 2025. I wanted that whole year in the book. So you're gonna have to go put the data in and, and, and then you're gonna have to go back and review the data. But the reality is I, I announced to my staff at the beginning of 2025 that we are now going to become metrics driven. I've got a year's worth of data. We're going to look at this, we're going to make decisions based on that. And it's, again, it's about marketing methods and what we do and so on. When you're new, though, and you start keeping track of this and you start keeping track of how many appointments you have and how many people you've traced or chased, rather to what end result. I think, I think it's, you're going to be amazed. You feel good when you get off the phone, but at the end of the day, the people who stroke you the most are the people that are going to blow smoke up your bum. So that's something I often refer to a stroke and smoke. So the next time, you know, the next, the next time someone starts telling you how good you are and how much they like you, just remember stroke and smoke and realize that they're blown smoke. And, you know, and, and you want to get the yes. Quicker or you want to disqualify them quicker? I mean, if they're really not interested, when do you want to find out?

Yep. Yeah.

Yeah.

Not at the end.

Not at the end. And, and the metrics. The metrics, I think in, in the, in the new advisor's world or in the single advisors world or just smaller advisors, the metrics are not going to be so much about what's working, what's not from a marketing method. Your dollars are going to tell you that, but it's going to be from who are you chasing that shouldn't, that you shouldn't be chasing.

That is such a good point. It's such a good point because you're right. And you, when you're younger and smaller, you hold on to this stuff so tightly because it's not a thousand leads, it's.

That's right. That's right.

You know, can I throw one again? Yeah.

One of the, one of the biggest mistakes that I've seen advisors make is, you know, is, is the fact that they are single or solo. Right. And they have this prospect that's on the hook and I got nothing better to do and no one else to call. So I will chase that person. I'm a, the hound dog. I'm gonna call that person 10 times, 15 times. You don't want to be the mosquito. Okay. The pest that is like they're trying to swat away. Look, if someone's drowning and you have the solution, how, how much do you have to try to sell a life ring to a person who's truly drowning?

Right.

You know, a person that's truly drowning is going to get you the statements when you ask. It's going to get you the questionnaire. They're not going to no show you if they're drowning. If you find it yourselves, having a, you know, you're chasing people and they're no showing you. And that's a frustration of yours. You're. You're going after the wrong prospect and the metrics will actually get you to that conclusion faster. And it's, it's a waste, it's a waste of time to chase people who aren't interested. Your time would be better spent and go find someone that is. But so much of, so much of the time, and in my early days too, so much of the time I was like, well, I'm gonna go call that person because they express an interest and they had a pulse two weeks ago or three weeks ago and I got nothing better to do and I'm.

Gonna call that person, and they're gonna see that I care. And the truth is they smell through that like they do, you know, dark smell, blood. Yeah. Yeah, they do. So, last question, and this one's a little bit off the wall. I didn't prep you with this question, but it's our last question that we have in every interview. Where are you trekking this year? And it can be business wise. Where's the. Where's your company going? Or even just you personally, where are you trekking this year? Just curious. Any final.

Yeah, so. Yeah, so good. So great question. Overall, we're at $54 million of assets gathered. There's about 20 million of it pending at this point, and $34 million of assets that have already been gathered that are, that are closed. And by the way, you have to have a process and a metric for what's closed and what's not. When is it issued? We, you know, you issued. Could be a lot of things, right? It could be, it could be considered closed when the client tells you I'm interested. That's not closed for us. Close for us is the money's transferred, and we've now invested it. So when I say that we have $34 million issued, we mean it's, it's in our possession and we, we've transferred it and we have another 20, I think 20. A little over $20 million pending. So from a firm standpoint, after four months, you know, you figure three more time periods like that, $53 million, you know, we're going to be sitting at about $150 million. That's a little short of where we want to be. Our goal this year is $180 million. But also the hardest problem I'm having is finding advisors. I'm looking for people that, that want to come and work for a firm that will have, you know, pretty much unlimited prospects and people to call an employment set for them, and all they can do is send, sell. You know, they sell. That's, that's, that's our process. So I'm, we're just having a hard time finding those people. But the reality is, is as a firm, we're a little behind where we want to be. My advisors, though, are growing. I've only got three advisors. I was trying to take. I'm sorry, I've got four advisors. I was trying to take myself out of production because I, I would be better spent training the advisors. So out of the $53 million that we've done, I've only done eight of it. And I. That's a lot of that's carried over from last year. So I've got one advisor that's done 20. I've got another advisor that's done 15. I've got another advisor that'S done 10. And those should have it up to around 50 million. Yeah. Okay, got it. So, but anyway, so that's about right. So they're doing phenomenal as well, too. The issue, one of the issues that we're. That we've run into is we deal with a lot of annuities because we specialize in retirement. Our, you know, Providence Financial focuses on income, income, income for people that are retirees. There's no better way on the face of this planet to get guaranteed lifetime income than with some annuity. So we're not annuity sales people. There's a lot of people that's all they do is sell annuities. The reality is that, is that we're not in that camp. We're registered investment advisory advisory firm. We have access to annuities. If someone doesn't want annuities, great. We don't use them. If someone wants guaranteed income, we use them. Probably 75% of our clients have an annuity stuff somewhere in their portfolio, and the rest of them don't. That brings us to the challenge that we've had is for. If you know anything about the annuity industry for the last couple of years, there's been a huge upgrade opportunity, and that's because interest rates have gone up, and it's allowed for our annuities being issued today to be much better than annuities that were issued three years ago. So we've gone through and upgraded most of our clients on the annuities, and that's led to huge revenue. Well, we've now done all our clients, so now we've hit a brick wall. We're like, okay, all the reven that, you know, a couple million dollars of extra revenue has now gone away.

Yeah, last year was really fun for.

That's right. Last year and the year before were really fun. And this year it's. This year it's a little more of a struggle. And it's. But what it's done is, quite frankly, as an owner and I, I told my agents this, I said, look, it was. It put me a little bit on easy street. Now that it's come to hit brick wall, I'm like, okay, we got to get back to business. And getting back to business, by the way, means looking at the metrics and really figuring out one of the questions I've had to answer recently, I've dug deep, is do we even keep doing something seminars? And I've answered that question. But your metrics and TTA has helped me answer that question with a definitive answer that literally just over the last weekend I came up with after several months of really trying to answer that question.

Yeah, that's huge. Anywhere personal? On the personal front, where are you trekking? Are you going any fun trips? Any, anything crazy on the personal front that you want to share doing this year?

You know, it's funny, we, I do a lot of travel. I do a lot of fun stuff. We're going to Greece. September. Yeah, so we are. We're going to Greece in September. Once a year we do a big international trip. Last year we went to Spain and we'll usually do two parts. We'll go into some place and then fly to another place and, you know, spend 10 days or so. The year before I went to Austria and Switzerland, kind of did that. So this year we're going to Greece. I forget that. Santorini, that island. We're going to Santorini. We'll spend four or five days there and then we're gonna go on pretty. Yeah. Then we're gonna go into Athens and spend time there. But it's, it's nice to know if I tie it back to business for a second. You know, one thing that I learned years ago that is if you're self employed, essentially you just bought yourself a job. And the one thing that I realized is that I didn't want to be self employed. And that's perfectly fine. If you do, a lot of people do. There's a lot of responsibility in having 20 employees and having advisors under you that have to mentor and train a lot of work. Less, not, not for everybody, for sure. But the reality is I didn't want to be self employed and just own my job. I actually wanted to be a business owner. And the difference if, if you're wondering like, you know, what's the difference? If you own your job and you're in Greece, you're not getting, you're not making revenue. If you are a business owner and you're in Greece, you're still making revenue. And you know, I've, I've become a business owner and I can, you know, proudly say that out of $53 million that we are at, in the first four months of this year that I've, I'm only responsible for, I think like eight of that and, and my ego, you know, a couple Years ago would have been like, you know, but the reality is I want to be responsible for none of it.

I love that. What a. What a cool goal. What a way to build it. And again, from going from, like, knocking on doors into where you're at now, you can go to Santorini and know that all is well. Everyone's been trained. Everyone has the process that you can go enjoy it.

So I talk to my mom every day on the way to the office. It's just she's lonely and she's always. And she's always talking about, you know, you were gone last week and you were gone, but for the last six weeks, I've been gone like four weeks, just different places. And she's like, so you contact your staff every day? I go, I. I mean, literally, today is my first day back in the office in 10 days. I've been gone for 10 days. And I think in the last 10 days, I think I had one issue that I had to directly be involved with. Other than that it's. It's running itself. And I don't know. I. I've seen. I think we got. We've had a really, really good month with our advisors. I think one of our advisors in the last 10 days has gathered about $5 million just. Just on our own, and I haven't had anything to do with it, so.

Yeah, that's huge. Well, you're on your way. Well done. Thank you so much for being on today and for your time, and I know people are going to find so much resource in this. Again, advisors need to hear from other advisors, and there just isn't a great platform to do that. So that is what we're trying to do here. So I just so appreciate your time, sharing your wisdom, sharing your knowledge, sharing your relationship with us and how it's been going. But best of luck to you, and I'm excited to get that new stuff up and running for you, but you have a great rest of your day. Thanks for being on.

Thank you, Erica, for having me. Anything I can do, just ask.