Jeremy Keil returns to the podcast to discuss three vital areas to business development: growing, planning, and serving.

John, I know oftentimes when I’m speaking with leaders of teams, they’re thinking about how to structure not only their team, but their business in the most efficient and effective way, not only looking at their role, but the role of their team, as well as how to serve their clients best. And oftentimes, there are so many moving parts, it’s difficult to sort all of that out. I don’t know if any of your conversations ever take you in that direction.

Yeah. It’s interesting. Julie, I think, you know, in the conversation we recently had with Jeremy Kyle, I actually mentioned a lot of times when I see teams growing, our our natural tendency is to want to hire other people like us. But what we really need to recognize is that we really need to hire complementary people who may excel in things that may drain energy from us. That’s the way I look at it. What what are those things about my role in my practice that I love doing? They give me energy and what are things that I’ll do them, but they really do take it out of me.

I could not agree more. And actually, Jeremy has some great insight on what he calls building a GPS for your firm, how to grow, plan, and serve. And I think he just shares some excellent insight on that.

Yeah. And I also really appreciated towards the end of our conversation, I urge our listeners to kind of listen for that as he talks a little bit about client acquisition strategy and making sure that your practice is recruiting and serving, the types of clients that you really want to. And I thought his insight there was especially helpful. So, Julie, why don’t you tell our audience kind of who Jeremy Kyle is and and why we’ve invited him on the podcast today?

Absolutely. Jeremy Kyle is the CFP and a CFA, and he’s a retirement focused financial advisor with Kyle Financial Partners. You can visit his website at Kyle fp.com. He is also the host of both The Retirement Revealed podcast, as well as the Mr. Retirement YouTube channel.

So please join us in a conversation that we recently had with Jeremy Kyle. Hi, I’m John.

And I’m Julie.

We’re the hosts of the Hartford Funds Human Centric Investing podcast.

Every other week, we’re talking with inspiring thought leaders to hear their best ideas for how you can transform your relationships with your clients.

Let’s go.

Jeremy. Welcome to the Human Centric Investing podcast. We’re so excited to have you here with us today.

Thanks for having me on.

So, Jeremy, on today’s podcast, we wanted to talk to you a little bit about the importance of roles in the financial planning practice, because many of the financial professionals listening to our podcast started as their one man shop. And, and what they found over time was that their business, because they presumably did a great job for their clients, continues to grow and build. And we’re really interested in talking to you today about your thoughts about as a business or a practice grows. Why is role setting so important? So maybe just orient us a little bit to the challenge first, and then we’ll talk about some of your thoughts about how you’ve dealt with it over time.

Yeah. The challenge is that especially if you start out with just one person, there’s an inordinate amount of different roles that are out there, that you’re helping your clients with or growing the business or working in the business. And then, of course, not everybody is suited to, for every particular role. And so you got a whole lot of things going on. And one of them is this concept of unique ability that Dan Sullivan and strategic coach talks about, that, you should find what you’re really good at and really love doing and just do more of that. And that’s great. But there’s a whole lot of other things that have to happen. And, making sure that you’ve got the right people doing the right things is a good way to help your clients, a good way to grow your business.

How do you begin that assessment process? Because oftentimes we think we know what we’re good at. But, you know, that could be a challenge. So do you have any guidance on where to begin that process?

Yeah. So there’s kind of two ends of it. One end is what are the roles you need to be doing in your business. The other part is it what are you actually good at in terms of the roles that you need to be doing in your business? I like to break them down into three different sections. The first is grow. The second is plan and the third is serve. So if you’re a financial advisor running a business, part of your job is actually growing the business. Another part of your job is doing the actual planning for the clients. Another part of job is the serving, the clients taking care of the different clients. And so as you’re going through with your business planning, as you’re going through maybe deciding what different roles or tasks need to be done, in the, in the, in your firm, think of those three sections, try to put it into those three sections of grow, plan and serve. And then you’ve got to figure out what you’re good at. I found that the, the Colby system, the Colby profiles, in my mind, is the best way to figure out, what are you good at in the working world? It’s basically how do you approach the problems that, that show up day to day? What’s your what’s your approach towards that and that? Naturally, Lindsay, towards different types of roles.

I know that, Julie and I have worked for teams over time where I think the pitfall is if we’re a very good analyst, we think we need to bring another very good analyst onto the team, which means we’re really good analysts. But there may be other parts of our business that suffer. Can you talk a little bit more about kind of how you found this Colby right fit system and maybe about how you yourself used it.

Yeah. So the Colby system is, not just, let me kind of, take a test and see what what my profile is. But they’ve got different, reports and ways to coach you through things. And they’re one of those systems is called the right fit, which is it’s a bit of that whole, you know, the right people on the right seats and the buzz kind of thing. You’ve got to take a look at the the role you’re maybe hiring for and even the manager who’s going to be in charge of that, that role and find the person that’s the right fit for that, that role. And so I’ve been a fan of Colby for years and knew my own Colby profile 7483 so high on the, the fact finding high on the the quickstart, part of it. But when I was hoping for a new role a couple of years ago, I decided to to go a step beyond find this, right fit where I took the questionnaire through Colby, and they were asking basically what what type of person needs to, fill this role, what type of tasks need to be done. So if you can find that person to, fill the role. And so with this Colby. Right. Fit as I’m interviewing people, that’s my second thing I do after the first interview with a potential hire. The second thing I do is send them to the Colby website so they can take their Colby profile, and then I match it against this right fit to see do they actually fit fit this role?

So when you’re thinking about roles, because this is a passion of mine, when you are going through the Colby process and really dissecting all of the needs on the team, you know, going through and documenting what everyone does, that’s something that I really feel passionate about taking teams through is thinking about, you know, what, what the roles and responsibilities are for each team member. Well, you talk a little bit about how that starts to play into the Colby assessment and how really kind of understanding what each person is doing on a day to day basis and, you know, plays into then how you can see what gaps or overlaps there are currently and then that how that helps you understand who you might need to bring into your team, into the future.

Yeah, there’s a there’s a lot of things that go in there. And I think the starting point that I use is this, this GPS, as you’re taking a look at your, your system, grow, plan and serve, because probably, there’s a personality or working profile that fits kind of each of those, those areas, or even if there isn’t, let’s just pretend there isn’t. Someone’s got to be in charge or something, right? And if if, you’re in charge of everything as a, financial advisor running your firm, you’re probably actually only going to work on the things you like to do. And so going through and realizing, what is it that you want to do, what is it that you’re really good at? And knowing that you need to have these different areas and maybe even different tasks or roles inside those areas? Put someone in charge of each of those, those different areas that the grow the plan and the serve and, and you’ll naturally see, kind of where you’re missing out on, on gaps. I’m thinking too, if you’re, you’re saying what’s the right type of person for this type of role? I’m gonna think of the this profile, actually, the risk profile right now. Probably the higher drive or the higher influencers, probably more in the grow section. And then you’ve got the, the S and C, which I think is, like steadfast, steadfast and compliance. Something like that. That SNC is probably more in the planning and the serving type of side. Or you think of, the Colby where the hi quickstart is probably the grow person. Right? I’m, interested in new things and meeting new people, and then I want to do it over again. Right. That’s probably grow type of person. And then the, the follow through high and the follow through is someone on the planning and the serving side of it. Interesting part of it’s, a couple of years ago when I did this right fit, of course, it’s 21, 20, 22. It’s hard to find, people to, change jobs. And and I spent over a year with a recruiter trying to hire someone. It’s helping that, that planning type of role. And, I just couldn’t find anyone. And you start thinking, maybe I don’t need that person. Right? I’m just going to take take this on myself like I’ve always been been doing. Why? I gave myself the right fit for that role so. Well, how how well am I actually doing at this job? So I took my Colby profile, put it into the right fit of the associate advisor, the person that’s doing all the follow through for, client meetings and client actions and things that need to be done. And I got a C minus, in my in my world of of hiring, I was not going to hire anyone that was even a B. Plus, I needed to find an E minus or better. And here I am saying I’m doing this job right now. I’m being the follow through associate advisor, and I’m a C minus. How much do I care about my clients if I put a C minus person, in that role. And so that really convinced me. Okay. Yes, I was hired for the last 12 months to. And if I want anyone yet to hire, that really fit, you know, kind of both, both ends of it. But I kept pushing through and found that that right fit found that, that a a level player for the, for that role.

And I was going to ask, was that a right fit for you?

It was. Yeah, yeah, it’s worked out, very well. And it clients realize real quickly, okay. Who is, it’s not always, ideas and follow through are completely separated, but, in my world, ideas are higher and follow through is lower. So I need someone on the, more on the opposite. And and so, yeah, I’ve got the preface. Okay. These are the three things the client ought to do. But then I lose interest because that’s just who I am. But then we’ve got, the people that can. I can do the follow through and make sure those things happen.

I think what’s interesting about any of these assessments, whether it’s Colby, your disc or you name it, is the insights that they provide truly about those natural strengths and passions. And I love how you said find those and then try to lead into those and really expand upon those. And I think oftentimes what we do is we try to, you know, find the gaps or the weaknesses, and then we say, let’s, let’s fix those. And I, I always think we should be aware of those, and we should work on those and cultivate those. But, you know, I hear so often that we’re trying to drag people out of their weaknesses, right? If someone isn’t a detail person, oh, we’ve got to get them into being a detail person, or if they’re not a public speaker or we really need them to get better at that. And I’m just such a believer that that’s constantly going to drain their energy. And they’re they’re constantly going to be deflated. And is that really ultimately the right fit for the role? And so I think that just going through this process and really understanding what is their natural strength and passion, you know, it’s I think it’s so interesting that the teams out there that I think really have done it right. They’ve established what each person’s natural strengths are. And I think their superpower is they put people in the right roles and then they let them run with it, and that’s what really makes them special. It’s not necessarily that they’re doing anything extra special, it’s just that they have the right people in the right roles, and they’re just letting those people own it and run with it. I don’t know, it just reminds me of that. And I just think it’s exciting when you start to put the it’s like a puzzle, right, of these human beings and you start to put it together the right way, and it becomes magical when people really can lock arms and do the things that they love.

Yeah. And you just show your passion, your energy. Right there talking about, putting the teams together. It’s interesting that Colby itself, when they when you get the Colby profile, they, they talk about the energy units of if you are, you know, 40% towards one away, you should spend at least 40% of your time and that that level, that mode of working. And of course, if you are spending your time in the area that you enjoy and are good at, it doesn’t cost you one level of energy. You know, it might cost you less than one level of energy. It might might give you some energy. But meanwhile, some other, place that you’re you’re not good at, you don’t care for. It might cost you more than one level at an energy. Right? It’s just, it’s exactly where you ought to be spending your time. And the things that you enjoy doing and you’re good at. And usually you enjoy what you’re good at and you’re good at what you enjoy. And that’s that’s a good recipe for, for live in life. If, if you can do those two things at the same time.

And retention of great people. Right. Which is so hard when you find somebody great, you want to retain them on your team. So I think it’s so interesting.

Jeremy, you know, when we were speaking, aside from what we talked about on the podcast already today, but when we were speaking offline, you mentioned something called the client average fee range exercise client average fee range exercise. Can you explain to the audience kind of what that is? And maybe Julie and I is kind of a guinea pigs to walk us through what that exercise looks like.

Yeah. You’ve got to pull up, my info as I’m looking at it and talking, things through here on there. What’s, interesting about, a lot of times when you’re trying to figure out who your ideal client is, you think about who’d you like to serve. Kind of the the problems that you like to, take care of. And you start thinking maybe demographically, okay, this certain age or or are these, parts of, the financial picture? You are you into college planning or retirement planning? And that’s that’s great. You should do that as well. But what’s interesting is that, a lot of times the the level of problems you’re being asked to solve are fairly correlated to the level of, fees that maybe the client is paying you. And, of course, you could just, do this in an AUM type of thing that you theoretically, some with $50 million has different level of problems or things than than 5 million and 500,005 thousand. So you could do it, in the matter of the level of, assets that someone has that that theoretically is just different things going on at those, different levels. I like to look at in the revenue world because, hopefully your clients are paying you a fee. That’s, that’s related to the level of value you bring in. You’re you’re charging them a fee that’s related to the level of value, that you’re bring. And so I, I sort it out by the, the fee range. And, it’s interesting, someone that’s paying me maybe 30,000 a year has a different level of expectation, different level of, things going on in your life than some that might be paying $300 per year. And you naturally kind of, gravitate towards, a certain level of, fees or that you’re charging to their, their paying. And what happens a couple times it happens there is if someone’s outside of that range, it might be that you’re, you’re overcharging them. Right. If you’re, if you’re used to solving 10,000 out of your problems and someone’s charges, you know, you’re charging someone 50 grand a year. I’m just curious if you’re actually even providing enough value there on the top side.

About how about the other way?

Yeah, if you go the other way, if you’re charging 10,000 a year and someone is only paying you $100 or $1000 a year, do you even care enough about them business wise? Right. So maybe give them the level of attention that they should, be giving you. Are they perhaps just being subsidized by the high end of your revenue clients? There’s there’s kind of, some business, maybe even ethical problems that come into play when when you’ve got a, people that are above or below kind of your standard range. And so I started looking at this, trying to figure out what is the standard range here for the business and maybe as a, as a client, or as an advisor. And that’s helpful to, as an advisor, you, you meet more and more people and you can’t serve them all. So you gotta figure out who’s the right fit, who are you going to look at? And really get excellent at helping them out. And so the way that I approach things is I, I take the average fee. So look at all your clients take the average fee and then double it and also cut it in half and theoretically. Right. So there’s about a 4 to 1 difference there. Theoretically there’s kind of a tight tighter range. Well the people that are above that range you’ve got to really start thinking am I providing the right level of value. What can I be doing to provide more value to those people? And then the ones that are below the range, are they actually kind of contributing enough to the firm to make it, profitable for you to serve them? If they’re not profitable for you to serve them eventually, you run out of business. But also, you know, to whoever’s the the lowest level fee paying, you’re just naturally going to not pay as much attention to them as you should. And everyone deserves to have the the client that every client deserves to have the advisor who is going to pay great attention and give them great, great value. And so as I go through and I, take that average fee level, double it and also cut it in half, look at the ones that are outside, of that to see who is the right advisor to perhaps be serving them. And so, if you, pay attention to some, financial advisor pundits, they would say you get five exceptions, you get five people that are really kind of not meeting your minimum out of 100. I’d say maybe more like 10% is is maybe an ideal, is my kind of thought, on there right now I’m looking I’m at 15%, so perhaps I need to, do some extra tightening of the range and just make sure that you’re in the right, right level of is interesting about this. The first time I did this, about two years ago, we had. I felt like our our firm, our team had too many clients, and, we just weren’t able to handle that level of clients. I was trying to. That’s why I was looking for, an advisor, then another advisor friend of mine, and he said that, just had an a new advisor. I just don’t have enough clients. And so I’m going. And talking to him. I had him go through do this range. For all the clients that were just below kind of that, the bottom side of this, this range were within his range, like, wait a second. Here, if we can, kind of tighten my range up and bring clients over to this new advisor that was right in the sweet spot. Like they knew how to handle these exact level of of clients. Then we we can make everyone unhappy here. And so that’s what ended up happening. I took, 50 clients and sold it over to their, firm. So now that new advisor had 50 clients that were exactly in his level of expertise. And we were able to have a tighter range, which made us have a greater ability. Right. If you have a tighter range, then you can really, really serve those people really, really well. And, myself, it’s myself and another advisor. John, what’s interesting is that, as you’re going through my own personal book of business and people that are maybe, revenue wise below this, average fee range for me, that’s exactly where he’s at. John’s at for his average fee range. So as a as an advisor and you think, well, I’m the best person that can do this, and I’m the only one that can do this. Well, if I, need to shift a client over to John, it’s exactly in this range. He’s. He’s dealt with dozens of clients with the same types of issues as this, this individual. Or if a new client comes in you, you kind of feel like, oh, I want to be the one that takes them on or why they’re there in, John’s exact ideal fee range. He talks to those people all the time. Maybe I’m not talking to those people all the time. But you want to find the best fit for the client. With the advisor that you’re. You’re bringing them to, to help them out.

I would imagine going through that analytics process also helps you create a more thoughtful service model as well. When you’re thinking about the number of proactive touches and activities in a given year for each segment of client.

It does. And what’s interesting too, I’ve, I don’t know where I heard it. So this is not my idea, but I heard someone way back, when on a podcast, they said, don’t adjust your service model to the client, so don’t have the, the a client that you do ten things for and the client that you do one thing for, adjust who the advisor is. So, I’ve got a different level of expertise and experience compared to John and others. And so, as a team, we have the same exact, touch points, every single year. And we just have a different advisor serving, the different people that are on there. And of course, if they’re outside of our average fee range, maybe we’re not. It’s not even the right, right team. For them, we often refer people out, if they, don’t happen to meet our investment minimums or they don’t happen to be a retirement planning focused client, because that’s all we look at as retirement planning focused. And, right now, if someone walked in and said, I’ve got 50 million to invest and here I am, I average, clients is about, a million and a half. Am I really the right person for them? Right. As much as I’d like to say yes, I want to take on this new, new client, this new level of, fees. Am I really doing a service if I, if they’re. So while the outside of the range.

Yeah. And I think what you find over time, we hear advisors share this with us all the time that the clients have brought on years ago, when they were building a practice that they really didn’t qualify them in any way or the clients, a that they don’t feel that they’re serving the best and b that are taking up an inordinate amount of their of the advisors time. And it just seems to be frustrating on both halves. So being a little more thoughtful on the front end, Jeremy I think is a really good idea.

Yep I agree. And it’s made a huge difference that we know exactly who we’re talking to, who are looking for kind of on the client acquisition side, I guess. But then how do we really best serve them if you’ve got this really tight range of here’s who we serve, you can get even better at serving those exact people.

So grow, plan and serve. Well, Jeremy, we have a little exercise here on the Human Centric Investing podcast that we call the Lightning Round. Now, it’s not going to be as extensive as any of the Colby systems, but if we fire a series of of just one one word answer questions to you, top of mind thoughts, we’ll get to know you a little bit better. And more importantly, our audience will begin to get to know Jeremy a little bit better. So if you’re up for playing, we can we can give it a shot.

Let’s go for.

It. Excellent.

Would you rather travel to the past or to the future?

Oh, that’s a tough one. I’m going to go. I’m gonna go a future just so we can get some good stock picks.

Yeah. Hey, golf. What’s your favorite city in the United States?

Oh. Favorite city? Oh, my goodness, there’s so many of them. My wife and I had a lot of fun in San Antonio and San Diego, just recently, last year. So I guess any, any San.

Diego would go.

Awesome.

What was your favorite board game? As a kid.

I loved, Risk and Stratego.

Coke or Pepsi.

I’m going to go. Neither for right now.

That’s why you’re the ideal weight.

Yes. That’s right. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

Get in there. I’ll go coke if I had to pick one. I’m picking Coca Cola.

Are you spontaneous or are you a planner?

I think I’m a good mixture of both. I was just taking my Clifton Strengthsfinder, so I’m pretty sure I had that exact question where I had to choose between the two, and I think I went neutral. I went right in.

Right on the line. How about, my last question. Would you prefer to go online shopping or do you prefer to go in the store?

Online shopping? Two clicks. You’re done.

Oh, yeah.

And what’s the first concert that you went to?

The first concert I went to was probably Fleetwood Mac with my dad about, 30 years ago or so.

Well, Jeremy, we can’t thank you enough for joining us here today at the Human Centric Investing one.

Yes, absolutely. Yeah. I love, listening, you guys, podcast. Glad to be of service.

Absolutely. And for our listeners, if you’re interested in hearing more from Jeremy, he has his own podcast. It’s the Retirement Revealed podcast, and you can also find him on his YouTube channel. Mr.. Retirement again, Jeremy, thank you so much for sharing all of your insight and wisdom with us today.

Thanks for having me on.

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The views and opinions expressed herein are those of the guest who is not affiliated with Hartford Funds. Investing involves risk, including the possible loss of principal. Fixed income security risks include credit liquidity, call duration an interest rate risk. As interest rates rise, bond prices generally fall.