This is Our Ideal Client (Ep. 3)

Welcome to Ideas by Mike, the podcast with Mike Milligan, where you will find one-of-a-kind financial planning advice for your one-of-a-kind life. With over 22 years of experience as a certified financial planner, Mike shares experiences and advice on crafting simple, easy-to-understand financial plans based on your values and priorities. He believes that taking a personalized approach is the best way to prepare for the future and give meaning to your finances. So follow along as Mike, and from time to time his guests, explore different strategies and tools that could help you secure your financial future in retirement. Now on to the show.

Hello and welcome to the Ideas by Mike podcast with your host, Mike Milligan. I'm Wendy McConnell. Hi, Mike, how are you?

I'm doing great, Wendy. How are you?

Oh, I'm good. I'm good. forward to today. Today we're going to be talking about how the experience is for the client when they come to you.

Well, yeah, I'm excited to talk about that also. I mean, we, we have the opportunity of working with, uh, thousands of people on an annual basis, of which some of those become our clients. And, uh, you know, I'm, I'm very interested to talk today about what our client journey is like, how people come to us. How they find us, and then once they get to us, what the experience is actually like.

Okay, sounds good. So where do you meet most of the people that ultimately become clients?

Well, that's you know that's a that's the starting point, right? Is anytime you know everybody we interact with were strangers to us at one point in time. They they they themselves are on a journey to be able to understand what their money's like. And they're looking for a partner not only that they can trust, that's a given, that they're looking for somebody they can trust in managing their money, but most people that we interact with share the same mission we have. They're people that understand they're living a one-of-a-kind life, yet they've been treated like average clients. Or they've not gotten advice that their one-of-a-kind life really deserves in the past. And so, when they come to us, they're coming to us from a couple different sources. We work with a lot of federal employees, people who serve us in the Department of Defense. They serve our veterans in the VA hospital. They work in the Department of Interior, the Department of Commerce. The IRS, you know, we actually work with a lot of people there who need to understand what their years of service and what their income will lead them to a retirement benefit and how they can best preserve what they have. We also do a lot of work with people, Wendy, who are hidden in plain sight. You know, there's a book out there called The Millionaire Next Door. Have you ever read that book before?

No, I haven't.

It's a— it says that when it was written back in 2001, 2002, that a millionaire looked like just an average person. They were driving a Ford F-150, living in a ranch home, and doing just average things with their life. And because it And because they're in plain sight, or the reason they're in plain sight is their money was accumulated slowly. It was put into a 401 plan with a weekly draft and a weekly match out of their paycheck. And it was just accumulated. It was out of sight of the traditional financial advising and financial planning world. And so, we deal with a lot of people who are out of sight of mainstream financial advisors. And they come to look for somebody who will treat them like from a one-of-a-kind standpoint. So when, when those clients, the ones that are hidden out of sight or those that are federal employees or families or friends that refer into us, when they come to us, they start the process of, of they have a, they have a qualification call or a strategy call. Some people call it a fact-finding call where For an hour, they'll spend time with me or Marcus or Joseph or Scott, and it'll just be a time where we get to know them and they get to know us. And we'll exchange some data back and forth. We'll go through who our firm is, like we did in episode 1 and episode 2. We'll go through who our firm is. You know, we'll go through who our strategic partners are, but then we ask them, why is money important to you? It's the question that we have to get answered, because if they don't know why money is important to them, you know, they're just going to be looking to us to tell them that. But we don't live with them every single day. So that question is, is, is the most important question that a prospect can answer to us. Then, like every other financial planner in the world, we exchange data, exchange tax returns, get investment statements. We look at their current holdings of investments, the insurance they have, but then we also construct a family tree. Those are the people who are eventually going to inherit the money. And we spend a lot of time by talking to our prospects that on that family tree is the IRS, the Internal Revenue Service. Um, Wendy, you know this. I mean, you talk to financial people all around the world, and you deal with people that you, you know, you deal with this too, is we're— we all owe our share of taxes to the government.

Uh-huh.

A lot of times that money has just compounded and it's grown over time. And so, we talk to our prospects of how important is to you, not only how important is your money is, how important is it to you to get out of debt? Not only your mortgage debt, but also the debt you owe to the IRS.

Hmm.

And it's a clarifying conversation. That first meeting is clarified. Because at that first meeting, we're not making any promises to move forward with them, and they're not making any promises to move forward with us. It's a get-to-know session. Well, about 50% of the people we speak with on our first— on our first meeting just thank us for our time, and we thank them for their time, and we both have learned something in that process. They've gotten some education. We've learned that they're not right to work with us, that their problems aren't as big as what they thought they could be. But then the other 50%, we do move forward in the process and we begin planning. This is the most critical component in our client journey because a plan, a financial plan— we talked about this last episode too. You know, why is financial planning so important? is because it sets the foundation or the bedrock for how people move forward with us, how people actually manage their money. And so, our team, our planning team, Caitlin, myself, Liz, Katie, we all will take the data that we learned about on the first meeting and we'll come back with a one-page financial plan. And it almost seems a little bit too simple, right? Could you imagine putting all of your life goals and your finances on one single page, Wendy? Isn't that just— it seems overly simplified.

It's like very tiny writing, I would think, Mike.

You know, we cheat a little bit on that, Wendy, because one page can be front and back. Okay, there you go. So, the more complicated cases, it's actually front and back, but it's still one page.

Okay.

The reason we like to put it on one page is we're not putting detailed analytics on that one page. What we're putting is, these are the things you've said are important to us, right? And it comes in the form of a statement of financial objective. So, all of our clients have an objective on what they're trying to accomplish. Some is, I want to get out of the tax code. Others is, I want to make sure I'm not a burden to my family members late in life. For others, it's, I want to make sure I don't run out of money. For others, it's, I want to make sure that I can travel 3 months a year while I'm retired, and I still don't run out of money. There's a lot. When people are living one-of-a-kind lives, they need a statement of objective of what their money is going to do to help them live that one-of-a-kind life. And that's where this one-page plan comes in. So, it lists the objectives and then it lists the steps to accomplish in working with us. So, it's just a checklist. I think we're all used in life to having a checklist of things that we have to mark off. To kind of move things forward. We put them on sticky notes, right? We put them on sticky notes and put them on our computer. And once they're done, we throw them away. We put them on the One-Page Financial Plan because once they're checked off, well, then they're clients. And that's when the real fun begins. Liz on our team is exceptional at managing our clients. She uses all the resources of our teams. But, you know, what she does is she will routinely check in on our clients to make sure that we're meeting our targets for what we put on the plan. But also, as life happens, you know, just, just this morning we got a message from a client who— it's a, it's a 90-plus-year-old client who had really one of the most unthinkable things happen. She lost a child. Right. I mean, that's something that, you know, I mean, even, even when you're 90, you don't want to lose a child. You don't want to outlive your child. But she said, hey, I want to make sure his money goes to his wife, right? And so, can you help me update the form so that that money goes to— and that's— and Liz will take care of that. We'll also do, you know, we do annual reviews with our clients. We celebrate milestones with our clients. You know, well, if, you know, like we're in graduation season now as we record this, right? College graduations are happening. You know, almost every day right now. And so, we have a lot of clients that we've helped them with college planning for either grandkids or kids, and we're celebrating those college graduations alongside of them. We're getting ready to enter marriage season.

Okay.

Right?

Yeah.

And what's interesting is these statements of financial objectives sometimes will include, you know, we want to save some money For our kids' weddings, we just had a client who who because of culture put aside over $300,000 for his only child's wedding, and we just got this right. Can you imagine that?

No.

But but through careful planning, through careful planning, we were able to give. his daughter the wedding that she wanted, the family, the experience they wanted without impacting the overall retirement plan and their life goals.

Wow.

Because see, a one-of-a-kind life, right, sometimes has one-of-a-kind goals. I would never spend $300,000 on a wedding. So, as my— I have 2 daughters, Wendy. They're both— one's 22, one's 18. So, As they're listening to this podcast, girls, you got to know I'm not going to spend $300,000 on your wedding.

Come on, Dad. Come on. No, right?

I know. But Grace and Paige, you know, I look forward to celebrating those with you, just like I look forward to celebrating those with our clients. So when our— so part of our client experience that Liz does when a client comes on board is we'll then Start to get to know the ultimate beneficiaries, that family tree. So, we get to know the kids, we get to know the grandkids, we celebrate well. Because if you're going to really have a one-of-a-kind life and a one-of-a-kind financial plan, you need a one-of-a-kind team like we are to be able to help you execute it. Now, you know, we just spent here 10 or 15 minutes talking about You know, going through the client journey. But Wendy, there's really 5 key elements that if somebody were listening to this podcast and they were saying, if they, if you're trying to envision yourself as a client of Ideas by Mike, you know, one of the things you've got to envision is what are things, what are things we're going to solve for? And so, if I can kind of take off my, you know, podcast hat for a second here, like put on my lecturer hat or my Education hat, if you're okay with that, Wendy. I'll just tell people what we're going to solve for.

I like the different hats.

Yeah. So, we're going to solve for 5 key elements with every single client. It's going to be, what is your tax plan? Number 2 is going to be, what is your investment plan? 3 is, what is your retirement income plan? 4 is your long-term care plan. And 5 is, what is your legacy plan? Now, all 5 of those key components make up financial planning in our world. And if we can have a plan— and see, this is where most— when most people come to us, they have 1 or 2 of those solved, or they think they have them solved. But what they don't have is all 5 of them working together. Because if you have your You know, if you have your tax plan, your investment retirement income, your long-term care, your legacy plan, and they're all working together, well, that's an efficient financial plan. And it will include things like, how do I pay the least amount of tax to the IRS over my life? How do I make sure my money's not at risk when I need it? How do I make sure I never run out of money? How at the end of my life do I ensure that I'm not a burden to my family? And then at the end, how do I get the money to my kids under the current laws where they'll pay as little tax as possible and they'll get it in the most private manner possible? See, Wendy, one of the things that our clients, if I could take off my professor hat now and put back on my advisor hat.

Please do.

So, from an advisor standpoint, one of the things clients love about working with us In us being a virtual financial planning world, meaning that we are dispersed all across the United States. My team is in Detroit, Chicago, a couple places in Texas, North Carolina, Virginia, and in Maine, right? Our people are around the country, but being virtual means that those people who have always been private, they've been out-of-sight millionaires. You're not going to run into us at your local food market. We're not going to be at church with you. Now, we have many people in our office who go to church and they'll be worshiping with you in different venues. But the thing about you having money private, clients having money private their whole life, is they want to make sure their neighbors or their coworkers or people in their, you know, people who walk their streets or people that they go see Little League baseball games with their grandkids, They want to make sure those people don't know that they're millionaires. They've intentionally led a lifestyle that has been very private. And we're going to ensure that remains private because we're going to meet them in their homes. Like right now, when I'm meeting with a client virtually, like on camera, I'm in their homes. I'm in their office. And I could be there at any point in time. Any member of our team can be in their homes. Right. And that's the beautiful thing about technology these days is we can have clients, you know, today I can meet with a client in Maine, in Texas, in Alaska, California, Utah, Illinois, all in one day.

Yeah. Right.

That was impossible.

Right.

It's impossible 20 years ago. But for a one-of-a-kind, to get access to a one-of-a-kind financial planning team, Well, we have to work virtually. And the thing is, is you're going to keep your privacy as a client because we're not going to run around talking about what you have. And people that live in small-town America, they want their privacy. They want to remain under the radar, right? And that's how wealthy people stay wealthy is because when wealth is acknowledged, then all of a sudden people come out of the woodwork saying, hey, can you give? Right? Charities do that, right? Family members do that.

Oh yeah.

And so that's the part of like remaining private. And ultimately, we're going to help in our 5-step financial planning process. We're going to help people make sure their legacy is private also. You know, just like they've lived a life full of privacy, they do the same thing at death. It stays out of the reach of the government. stays out of probate, and either kids or ultimate beneficiaries get it as efficient as possible. So if— so our client journey, I'd like to say it's unique, but it's not. It's just one of a kind because that's, because that's our, that's who we are as financial planners. We want to create a one-of-a-kind financial plan for our clients' one-of-a-kind life.

So can I just ask, with the one sheet, is this Is this telling you things like if you want to travel 3 months leading of the year leading up, is this okay? You need to put money aside here. You need like, what does that look like on the page?

That's a really good question. So if one of your goals is to travel those 3 months, well, you've got to have the money, right? You know, traveling is not an inexpensive proposition anymore. So like if that's going to cost you $40,000 or $50,000, well, you've got to know where that money's going to come from. And so it'll clearly define on the one sheet that off of this investment account, we will use $50,000 for the rest of your life for you to experience the places you want to experience. You know, we talk about, you know, that one specific client comes to mind here who they were wintering or they lived their whole life in New York State. And when do you know about the weather in the Northeast? It can be a little rough.

Yeah.

Right. And they, they've retired from a major, from a major Fortune 50 company. And they wanted to spend 3 months in a, in, in the South, in warmer weather in the winter. But they did not know where they wanted to go yet. Right. Most people, because they were so busy working, accumulating assets, raising kids, they had never experienced a winter outside of New York State. And so in our one-page financial strategy and in our planning process, we set aside over the first 5 years double the amount of money that they would need for that eventual travel so they could experience a couple places each winter.

Okay.

So they were going to spend in the first year, they were going to spend 10 weeks in Florida, 10 weeks in Arizona. And then in the next year, they were going to spend 10 weeks on the Gulf Coast. Right? And then they wanted to spend 10 weeks in Central America. So we actually created a plan for them where their money was still going to be safe, it was still going to grow, but they were going to be able to experience something in the first 2, 3, or 4 years so they could eventually get to that place they were going to go. See, that's a— that's an experience, right? You know, on a— on a journey, on any travel journey, right, you'll always go somewhere And, you know, we go on vacation, we'll go somewhere on a vacation and be like, man, I wish I would have done this on that vacation, or I'll never go to that place again. Right. So it's really going to be one of those 2 experiences when you go on vacation. Well, if you're going to commit 3 months out of the year, every year to a place, you need to go experience a couple of different places and see, is that somewhere I want to go experience again, or is that somewhere I never want to go again? Because the last thing you want to do is make a mistake, you know, buy a new house or in an area that you don't have any connection to. And so we create that in the One-Page Financial Plan. We create an opportunity for them to be able to experience a couple different places if they've never done it before.

Okay, that's great. So what else do we need to know when we are coming to you as the client experience?

Everything that we're doing is from the standpoint of a fiduciary. I also, though, am a professor at a college where I teach financial planning to graduate-level students looking to themselves become financial planners. So, when you come to us, you're going to see a very academic-based approach to financial planning, but it's always going to be personal in nature. It's always going to be about you. It's not going to be the same, the same plan that anybody else gets. We don't have a template, right? Our, our only template is a blank piece of paper, and then it's based off you and us putting together the plan on that blank sheet of paper to shape what the rest of your life's going to be like. Because, because one of the things is Anybody that's approaching retirement has spent most of their life in the pursuit of a happy ending, right?

Yeah.

That's what we're all taught. You watch any fairy tale, right? We want the happily ever after. Well, retirement should be the happily ever after. And so, in order to get there, I mean, anybody who's written a great story or a great movie, They all started with a blank piece of paper, and we're going to do the same thing. The only thing is we're going to put your life experience on that paper, you know, and we're going to put what your hopes and your dreams. And when you're done with it, it's just going to be— it's going to be your roadmap for the rest of your life to your happily ever after. And that's what— and that's what we help people with every day. You know, we will talk to on any given day Between Marcus, Joseph, Scott, myself, and our team, we'll speak to 20 to 30 new people per day who come to us from watching our YouTube or following us on YouTube or seeing us on Instagram or coming to one of our educational webinars or coming to us from, you know, referrals from other federal employees who've worked with us in the past. You know, we love referrals and we'll talk to them every day. And then if we can help them, we're going to. But at the end of the day, it's about giving them something that can be executed, right? We work the way we work with our clients is unlike anybody else. We're not going to be cookie cutter, meaning we only do one thing. We will— we do— we manage clients, all of clients' assets. We— or we just create plans or we just work with part of their assets, right? Because it doesn't matter if you're a do-it-yourself investor. If you need somebody to do it all for you, or if you just need somebody to give you financial planning advice, being one of a kind means that we can be a lot of things to our clients. And we only work with people that we want to work with, just like you should only if you're watching this and you're looking to man, should I work with Ideas by Mike? You should make the decision of only working with somebody who you want to work with. Don't feel like you have to work with a big brand, right? Because we have all the big brands behind us— Fidelity and Nationwide and Athene, and the list just keeps going on, right? The biggest players out there, Ideas by Mike can bring to the table. But one of the things is we bring is independent thought that's rules-based, it's academics-based, but it's where you in your life is going to be written all on one page. It's going to be easy to understand.

Okay. Well, I love it. It sounds like a great experience, Mike.

I think so. We have, we have some great stories that we get to, that we get to hear about what our clients experience, you know, about what they get to do. And a lot of times we get to, we get to live vicariously through our clients in their travels. You know, when they go to Hawaii, they send us pictures. When they go to Turks and Caicos, when they go to Chile, When they go to Africa, we hear all of their stories and we see their pictures and we love that. So we, we get to experience the birth of grandkids, the graduation of kids, right? The marriages, we see it all. And that's what, that's what, when we see that, we know that we're really making a difference because we're, we are with them. You know, we get tagged on Instagram.

Oh yeah.

In intimate family experiences, just like we're an uncle or an aunt.

Right?

Yeah. And it's amazing to be a part of that. So, it reminds me of a commercial. It reminds me of a commercial a while back where there was a financial advisor speaking at a wedding. And, you know, somebody came up to him at the end and said, hey, wow, that was a great speech. Who are you? He said, I'm, you know, I'm their financial advisor. And that's what we want to be, right?

Yeah.

As a certified financial planning professional, but more importantly, as someone who cares about The clients we work with, we want to be there through all steps of the way.

Okay. So if somebody has more questions about Ideas by Mike, how do they get in touch?

They can connect with us on YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn. All of those, all of those means have direct messaging capabilities. You can go to our website, ideasbymike.com. There's a Contact Us section on there. There's also our office phone numbers on there where you can reach out directly and Lorraine or Kelsey will get you scheduled with one of us. But, you know, but most of all, just Google me also. You can go to Mike Milligan, Mike Milligan, CFP in Google and see what Professor Google says about Ideas by Mike and Mike Milligan and see what you can find there also.

All right. Sounds great. Well, thank you so much. And thank you for listening today. Please like, follow, and share this podcast with your friends. Until next time. I'm Wendy McConnell.

Thank you for tuning into Ideas by Mike, the podcast, the show where ideas turn into money. If you enjoyed today's episode, make sure to click the follow button to stay up to date on future releases. For additional information on becoming a part of the Ideas by Mike community, check out our website at ideasbymike.com. Don't forget to take a look at the show notes and for more financial insights, Subscribe to the Ideas by Mike YouTube channel or visit the website to find one of the upcoming webinars. Also, connect on Instagram or Facebook at Ideas by Mike. Ideas by Mike is an LLC headquartered in Virginia with offices in 42 cities. The company owns an insurance agency registered in all states directly or through affiliate companies. Mike is an investment advisor representative with JB Wealth Advisors. Any financial planning information shared on the show should not be construed as financial advice for you personally. For your one-page financial plan, please reach out to Ideas by Mike through the website. The information covered and posted represents the views and opinions of the guest and does not necessarily represent the views or opinions of Ideas by Mike. The content has been made available for informational and educational purposes only. The content is not intended to be a substitute for professional investment advice. Any financial planning information shared on the show should not be construed as financial advice for you personally. For your one-page financial plan, please reach out to Ideas by Mike through the website.