Episode #10 – Behind the Grind: Dual Perspectives on Building a Business

Welcome to the Millennial Money Moves Podcast. On today’s show, we’re diving in the minds of game changers, risk takers and builders of the future.
We’re talking with not one, but two incredible entrepreneurs who are shaking things up in their industries. From startup struggles to breakthrough moments, they’re here to share a real unfiltered journey of building something from the ground up.
We hope you enjoy this one. This content is purely educational and does not tend to be financial advice or financial planning.
Please consult your professional financial advisor or tax professional to receive tailored advice to your personal situation. Babin Wealth Management is not responsible for action taken by listeners based on educational content provided.
If you would like to receive personal financial advice, please reach out to Babin Wealth Management directly at babinwealth.com. Let’s make moves. Welcome everybody to another episode of the Millennial Money Moves Podcast.
I am your host, Sean Babin, and with me today, I have two very special guests. I have Jeff Rusin and Matthew Awai from Advisor Tech Partners.
These guys, I ran into off YouTube and I wanted to bring them in to kind of talk about the entrepreneurial journey that they’ve both been on.
They’ve started a company after kind of working in the finance industry and found each other and built a business off of helping other financial advisors.
So I thought it would be a great conversational piece to learn from entrepreneurs, learn how to start a business, learn kind of good things and maybe some mistakes that you guys made, as well as you guys talked to us about some money moves and things
you’ve kind of seen in the industry working with financial advisors. And then now your business model is again working with financial advisors, but helping them out on their tech side.
So yeah, you guys have been great for me and helping my company out. Want to give you your shine right off the jump because you two have been awesome. And like I said, I found you guys on YouTube.
It was hysterical. I was trying to figure out how to do something with my CRM. And I just Googled it.
And sure enough, Jeff had a video on YouTube that kind of talked about how to help me. But it was just the perfect amount of like, hey, we’ll give you enough to try and think about you can do this. And then you go try and do it on your own.
And you’re like, there’s no way I can do this. Meaning like I didn’t have the technology bandwidth to be able to really pull this off or make it work correctly.
So I always give Jeff that kudos of like, you put the perfect amount of info out there to realize like, hey, you do need our help to be able to make this kind of complete. Welcome to the podcast, fellas. How are you guys doing today?
Doing great.
Doing great.
Excited to be here.
Good deal.
Well, yeah, like I said, I want to jump in and just hear your guys’ story. Like, Jeff, let’s start with you. Then Matthew, I’ll go to you.
Just your journey from, you know, where you came from, where you went to school, how you ended up in the financial services industry and then how you two kind of linked up. And built a business, so, yeah. I’ll let you go, Jeff.
What’s wrong with that?
Yeah, so I went to school in Los Angeles, like near Los Angeles, when you’re college. And that’s where Matthew’s from, but I didn’t meet him there or at that time at all.
So I spent four years there and then found a job as a CSA type deal at a firm in my hometown. And that’s where I got to introduce Client Service Associate. But there was like no real job title.
I’m like, I’m making that up because that’s like the closest thing I can actually relate it to, right?
Okay.
Yeah, it was me and an advisor in just an office, right? It was just like two people. Awesome.
And so that’s where I learned about Redtail, so like financial advisor CRMs, and then a bunch of other tools like Zapier. Like my boss was having me try to figure out Zapier all day. And so that’s what I did for a while.
And then after eight months, I stopped and started doing consulting for firms, wherever I could find the work. And eventually started getting more and more clients, landed a couple of clients in California.
One happened to be where Matthew was working, but he’ll tell his story. Yeah, that’s really it and how it started.
What did you study at school? Were you always kind of IT focused?
I studied finance because basically my mom told me to. You know, like she always kind of thought that was like the route of success. So it was like finance and economics.
But I always remember growing up and being able to plug in the HDMI cable for my grandparents, and then they think I’m Elon Musk. So I’ve always thought that was a good feeling when I fixed something for someone on the tech side of things.
So like you’re studying finance and you kind of got this knack for software systems.
Where did you kind of realize, was it working for that advisor in that first job out of school where you’re like, hey, this is more interesting for me, helping out with back end systems versus maybe sitting down with a client or helping prepare a
Yeah, I was in the middle of studying for a series exam.
He was kind of lining me up to sell annuities, I would say, and stuff like that. And that just wasn’t in my wheelhouse of what I wanted to do.
I don’t really like meeting with people and explaining how they can get guaranteed income for the next 10 years or whatever. I found a lot more joy in having workflows launch automatically and stuff like that, right?
So I started calling around and cold emailing and stuff like that. And actually it all started on Fiverr. So yeah, I just posted Redtail stuff to Fiverr and I was the only one.
And people would just be hitting me up there. And that’s where the first few projects got started off.
So you’d be like, hey, if you’re having trouble with Redtail doing X, I can help you with that. That’s kind of what posting to Fiverr means.
Yeah, like you post a gig. And so I’d have a bunch of different gigs for different Advisor Tech platforms. And like nobody else had things like Redtail or FMG Suite or stuff like that.
And so people would contact me being like, hey, can you help me do this, this and this? And so I’d have a meeting with them and then off to the races. Because I was the only, I didn’t have any competition on Fiverr at the time.
But now, Matthew, I got Matthew’s competition there.
All right. Well, Matthew, perfect segue to Matthew. Let’s hear how this competition lined up and let’s hear your story, man.
Yeah.
So taking a way back, went to college in San Diego area, went to like a pretty medium size schools, Cal State University, San Marcos, and just like Jeff studied finance.
And I think like everyone else in our industry studies finance, wants to be an advisor, but doesn’t really know how to get to that point.
So you kind of start off in that Client Service Associate role, where you learn a lot about how do you interact with the client? How do you manage your prospect? How do you open up paperwork?
And like all these questions that you don’t get any knowledge or really basis on through school. So I started out with an internship at a small firm that supported a broker dealer on the client servicing side.
So I had exposure to about eight different financial advisory firms when I just started out.
And for just talking about like learning about an advisor’s style and how they run their practice, like it’s hard enough to learn how one advisor likes to interact with their clients.
But when you’re trying to learn multiple advisory firms and their practices, it’s hard. So you have to learn to adapt really quickly. You understand processes a lot more better because you’re getting a lot of variety.
So that was my initial intro to the industry. Then eventually worked my way up to managing a team about five oversaw about 40 different advisory firms all at once.
And from that point, I think it was just a lot more thinking about, like my initial goal here was to then get to that advisory point. How do I make that jump? Because, you know, at the firm I was at, it was only operations is very operations heavy.
So took a jump and took a leap in my career early on and moved to that firm that Jeff and I actually met at.
And I think from the beginning, we kind of just clicked because every time we’d interact, anytime we’d have like any like projects where we would overlap, we’d always have like this synergy of like, hey, you know what you need to do?
I know what I need to do. Like, let’s just go kill it and get it done like super quickly.
And essentially, we were able to do a lot of good work over there, build a lot of systems, processes for this financial advisory firm, and eventually led to the point where I think we just couldn’t grow any much further.
So I decided to leave the firm. I didn’t see many more growth potential there. And then Jeff hit me up about a couple months later and said, hey, like, still looking for a job?
Are you still looking to what’s the next step for you? And I was still searching for that next firm. And I said, you know what, like, I’m not doing anything.
And he said, well, come on, join me and see what happens and do the consulting side with other financial advisors. And that’s how essentially we got started into Advisor Tech Partners.
Nice. So you guys were actually W2 employees of the exact same company kind of before. Jeff, you were doing consulting on the side, but also working for this large…
I was 1099.
Okay.
Yeah.
So it was like 1099 employees, essentially.
Gotcha. But that’s how you met, was working for this one single kind of big firm. Awesome.
Exactly. So then…
That’s crazy.
Yeah, that is. So I mean, that’s life, man. You kind of run into good people, stick with good people, and stay in touch with good people, especially like-minded people.
And then Matthew, did you as well just kind of have that… As you said, you wanted to make a leap for being in the financial advisor position, but now you’re kind of running a technology company. Where did that peak your interest?
At what point were you like, hey, this is what I like to do?
I don’t know if it’s fully what I like to do. I think one day I’m still going to want to be an advisor. It’s just a longer path now, but I think I just found something that I am good at.
I’m good at operations. I’m good at doing these things internally.
But I think the opportunity to work alongside with Jeff kind of like made that decision finalized for me because I knew he was very like-minded and understood, I understood his vision of what the company was going to be.
So I wanted to support that and essentially build a foundation so that we could build a consulting firm that wasn’t just the Jeff and Matthew show in the long run.
Yeah, love it. All right, well, yeah, I think I’ve mentioned that on the podcast a couple of times before.
It’s like, you know, when you start off out of college, you’re kind of doing the entry level, trying to figure out where you want to be, who you want to be and who with you want to be that with, you know, when you know that that job is not going to
be for you, I always tell people like cut and move on, like just find that one that’s going to work. Like when you realize that ceiling is capped for you or you’re not going to make what you want to make or there’s no like room to move up, I always
tell everybody like that’s the moment you start looking for a new job. I think I bounced around for the first four or five years of my career. Every six to eight months, I was getting a new job. Is that kind of what you guys went through too?
Just about, yeah.
For me, I go for Jeff.
For me, I had a job and then I quit it once after and just took a leap of faith. And if everything was stripped away for me, I’d be at like the public library on a computer.
They’re trying to start something, you know, that’s what it would come down to.
Love it.
Yeah, same.
And then Matthew kind of said, yeah.
Yeah, I hit that ceiling right at the companies I was at and there’s really no more growth potential or really anywhere else to go. So yeah, I just kind of have to move on, take the skills and part ways.
So Jeff, it was eight months in that you were like, hey, I want to start doing something for myself or kind of build my own company.
Yeah, it was eight months in. And then you might hear like my mom a lot in this story. She had a big-
Hey, they’re influential people, man.
Yeah, big influence on me.
She was like, are you sure? She’s scared. And I was pretty scared too.
But then I just got like a sole proprietorship and like with 25 bucks and it was official. It was like, and then I was like off to the races.
And then I found myself working a lot more than I did at the original job and it not feeling like as much work. So that’s when I knew it was good. And then my mom would be like, you need a partner, you need a partner.
I’m like, what do you mean? I can’t just put something out and I’m nothing right now, like completely nothing. And so I just kept going for a couple of years.
And then it just comes to you. It just came to me. I couldn’t just go out and find a person and be like, hey, help me.
Like this made sense. So it’s a lot harder than one would think.
It is and it’s like, you’re doing it by yourself for however long you need to, but you’re also not rushing the process like you just said. You’re not just going to put an ad out and hire from a candidate pool.
It sounds like you were looking for a good fit. It just came along versus looking for it.
Yeah. And what I was doing is nothing like Advisor Tech Partners, the first one. It’s not even like the real one.
Right now, it’s the real one. Matthew and I made this one. And what I was doing before was just taking any type of thing I could for financial advisors.
My niche was like, I help financial advisors, and that was as far as it went in terms of niching down. And so when Matthew and I joined, it really became focused down on this niche of operations and automations. So it all made sense.
How long have you two been operating Advisor Tech Partners as it is now?
September 2nd, 2024.
Dang.
We launched businesses at the exact same time. Mine was September 4th.
Yeah, there you go.
That’s crazy. That’s so crazy. But yeah, another, that’s wild.
But I’m totally with you. Like that leap of faith. And my mom said the exact same thing to me.
She was like, wait, what? Are you sure you want to do this? That’s so funny, man.
That’s way too similar in scenario right there to just be having your mom walk you through it, just like mine did, or at least you get a good sounding board. Try it, try it out on them and see if it works.
And then if it doesn’t, you know, ask a couple more people. But I’m sure you had support from friends and family, the likes. I’m sure your mom wasn’t the only person you kind of said bounce this idea off of.
So kind of what was your process starting the firm? Who did you talk to? What did you learn about yourself?
Like, let’s dive into that a little bit, like starting a company. I think that’s something that would be interesting for the Millennial listeners out there.
It’s crazy how at some point you realize like, you’re good at X, but you don’t, you kind of want to do this for yourself, or you want to dive into something on your own versus continually do this like corporate ladder thing, try and look for
promotions. And some people, that just works great. And then there’s other people who can’t be stuck in that box and want to figure out how to get out of it.
And so talk, walk me through just starting your business and some things you learned about you, some things you learned about the industry, and some fun stuff along the way for you.
Matthew, you can take this one.
Ciao, man. I will, I’ll say this. In my nature, I am very introverted.
And if you want to be an entrepreneur, you can still be an introvert, but you need to talk. Like you need to exert all your energy into connecting with any industry expert that you can get your hands on.
I think when Jeff and I had started, Jeff had a lot more experience in the entrepreneurial world, running his own business for two plus years. To me, this was all new, right? Because like you said, I was still in the box.
I was still trying to get promotions within the ladder that was already built. And essentially, I had to learn really quickly, I’m not given tasks anymore on a weekly basis, or I’m not given a quarterly quota, or anything else, right?
Like it’s all on us now, right? To come up with those metrics, to come up with how we want to grow the business. And you know, that’s exciting.
But then, you know, first, you’re like, well, how do I do it? So that’s my key advice is like, if you’re wanting to try something, go connect with the people that are industry experts.
I think at the beginning, Jeff and I too, we thought like, hey, like these people may be competitors, or they may be people that do or want to take business away from us.
But I think we nipped that early on and said like, hey, like if they’re, if they have a better product than us, and if they’re doing a better job, then that just means we need to do a better job here at Advisor Tech Partners.
We should just connect with them and see, you know, what are they doing? Where’s the gap in the market? So we could also provide a service in there.
Well, so that’s exactly what pushed me over the top finally was another advisor, just another advisor who opened up the hood for his firm, showed me, you know, what software to use, what custodian to use, you know, how to do compliance and kind of
laid out a roadmap for me that I didn’t know otherwise. Like, it’s hard taking that leap of faith and having to figure that all out after the fact, it’s best to do kind of your homework, talk to people who are in that industry and get a little more
comfortable footing, have like a nice checklist of like, here’s the 20 things I got to do before I start this company. And you get that checklist from other professionals in your industry having those conversations. So super smart.
Couldn’t agree more.
I’m not going to lie, you got super lucky too with what that person recommended you, like the Wealthbox Altruist Combo there, like that’s, you got set up nicely.
Yeah. So Jeff just is just saying for the layman’s terms out there, like my software is sweet.
It is.
Yeah. No. And you’re right.
Like you, that’s another thing too, is who, who do you trust? Who do you really, who’s on the cutting edge? I guess is what Jeff’s trying to say in our industry.
There’s, it’s a dinosaur world in the financial planning, financial wealth management space.
It’s tons of legacy advisors with millions and billions of dollars that are, don’t want to spend any more money or make any changes to kind of do the right things in regards to their systems. And so, yeah, starting with the best.
I didn’t know I was, but, you know, running into you guys and you telling me I was is great. And so, yeah, do talking to an advisor or sorry, talking to a mentor that’s kind of in the same, I would say, generation is you two or around it.
They’re up to speed with kind of what’s going on today versus if my mentor was 55 or 60 and I looked at how they ran their practice versus the mentor that was exactly my same age that kind of had a beat, you know, his ear to the street of like, hey,
here’s the up and coming technology and software that is being utilized today. Not the ones that they’ve been using for 15, 10 years. I think super important. And yeah, Jeff, just super lucky at that.
All right, so now you guys are up and running. Advisor Tech Partners is the name of their company. Go check them out.
If you’re a financial advisor listening, they do wonders for integrating your different software suites and making them more seamless and easier for you to use.
Get it.
How do you two like kind of rules like talk to like, I don’t have a partner, it’s just me. So like, I’m responsible for everything. How do you two, how’d you come up with that at the beginning?
I think that’s, it’s tough going into business with people, you know, and defining rules is one thing, defining equity is another thing, defining who’s working harder and this, that and the other, like it gets messy. It’s a relationship.
So how do you guys kind of navigate working together?
I think in the beginning, sorted itself out pretty well. I think we try to take a logical approach to it.
Like one person does this thing better and the other person does this thing better, make sure they go their route, especially for growing the business too, as we want to hire people in the future.
We want to keep that in mind, keeping the right people in the right seats. I knew Matthew was like a workflow killer in the beginning, like so good at workflows. And for people who, I guess I have to explain that right, people that don’t know.
Yes, please.
For people that don’t know, workflows are in our terms, like in the advisor world, it’s like a set of tasks that Matthew, that you line up, that you line up like when to assign everybody on the team different tasks for a common goal.
So if you have an intro meeting scheduled, then an intro meeting workflow will launch and the correct people will be tasked for what needs to happen. It makes sense.
So did you see that from Matthew, when you guys worked together, you could see him go from basically start to finish and he could crush it, building out the workflows in between.
We got so lucky right in the beginning and got a deal right out the gate. And the client had sent us over this big recorded Zoom call of how they want the workflow to go.
And then I was working on it and then Matthew took a look at it and just signed it off.
Yeah, just the magic dust. He threw it on there and then a workflow popped out. But defining roles, I think, at the firm has come pretty naturally.
And Jeff and I always have it in mind. Like the end goal is for us to set these things up internally, like our own processes, so that someone eventually can take our place, right?
Like we’re really in the mindset of we want to be able to delegate and then elevate up into true owners and true, I’d say, managers of the business, because we see it every day in the financial advisory space where financial advisors may hire a CSA,
an associate advisor, and then they have a whole team of, let’s say, 10 people under them, but they really haven’t set up the practice to run as a business. They’ve really just built it so that they’re managing every single individual, but they can’t
hire a manager to manage those people. All this hard work that they’re going through, the 10, the 20 plus years, and they get to this point and they can’t hire new people because they didn’t get these processes down or they didn’t delegate and set
these roles up correctly. So that’s something that I think we’ve just had an advantage in, and because we see it every day in our practice and how we consult, it always reminds us to say, hey, if we’re doing this one thing, how can we set someone
Yeah.
Well, so that’s-
Perfect example. Sorry.
No, go for it, Jeff.
Okay. A perfect example is we were just doing our, we’re licensed or LLC is based in California, so we have to pay like this $800 a year tax, besides the point, but- Yeah.
Not the shout out California taxes.
Yeah, shout out.
Yes. Absolutely. And Matthew, I was like, okay, I’m going to do this thing.
And Matthew was like, okay, record a loom. So now like we have like this process oriented approach towards everything. So when we do have someone in place, we already have like a recurring task that has a video showing you how to do it.
And that’s the approach we keep taking and keep doing, even though we don’t have an employee yet.
No, that’s super smart. Yeah, it’s the whole idea of starting with the end in mind.
Right.
And advisors like in being a financial advisor, having a financial advisor practice, I kind of get like they become that silo of information and they just disseminated downward, but they’re still on top and everything still has to like kind of go
through them for like approvals and okays. And honestly, I really think it’s because we’re such a relationship business and you work so hard for these clients and it’s their money that’s on the line.
Like it’s very an emotional place for us to, because like we don’t want to mess it up or drop a ball or stop talking to these people.
Like that’s my biggest fear is I hire a junior advisor or somebody at some point down the future is, I have to give them some clients.
And so is that person going to be upset that I’m not their main point of contact anymore or is it going to be a comfortable transition? Am I going to miss them? Are they going to miss me?
Like it’s a crazy emotional place for an advisor where you do just kind of hold on to all the info because it’s not as much like transactional basis process. It is process oriented, but it’s not transactional.
It’s more like you’re dating all these people. You become friends. I’m going to their weddings.
They’re coming to mine. Like we’re having kids’ birthdays together. Like it’s just a different kind of business model that becomes very, very intertwined with kind of your personal life, which is really fun, but hard to let hard to let those go too.
It is.
I know Jeff and I talk about that all the time saying like, Hey, like, you know, are we always going to be in on these meetings? Are we always still going to have these client interactions? How would people react?
Right? Like that’s very important. And to that point I made earlier, like making sure that you’re setting yourself up for success.
I got this link here. It’s called E-Myth Revisited. Great book again for entrepreneurs, for people wanting to set up their business.
Like if there’s something you need to do before starting your business, it’s reading this book. It’s a great one.
All right. One more time with the book.
It’s called The E-Myth Revisited.
And it just kind of goes into starting your own business.
Like building out processes. Yeah. Talking about like if you were to be the owner of a company, but you’re also like the operator of it, how do you get to the owner stage without being the operator for the next 20 years or 30 years?
Yep.
No, I’ve heard that one too where it’s like, how do you go from entrepreneur to business owner? And navigating that line of like delegating and hiring the right people.
And like you said, moving yourself upwards and replacing people that do the job you did that now let you focus on all different areas of the business versus being the one who has to be in every single meeting kind of thing.
So yeah, super exciting place for you guys. I still can’t get over the fact we literally started our firms within two days of each other.
That’s crazy, huh?
That is crazy, that’s so crazy. All right, well, this, so like actually, before I get in that question, talk to me kind of about, you know, what is your guys’ structure with running the business, like talking to each other?
Are you meeting, like, you know, obviously you’re meeting and talking about what’s going on work wise, different projects, everything’s, but like when you guys want to huddle up, talk about maybe the economics of the business, go over books, like,
you know, how are we growing? How do we grow? Like what does that process look like for you two? How often are you meeting?
What are you discussing? You know, are you both in on all the financials as one person doing it? I’m just curious as a solopreneur, like how that works with having a partner.
Yeah, so we got some time set up every Friday, just about an hour or two where like our focus is going through anything that had happened in the past week.
It kind of takes from the entrepreneurial operating system or EOS system where you kind of go through like these checklist items of things. And like for example, that first one would be going through like any reoccurring items that we established.
Like, oh, we need to do a check in on each other. We need to make sure we’re checking on our opportunities pipeline. Kind of like along those lines where we just need to do on a weekly basis.
Then we go into this thing called IDSing or identify, discuss and solve where we just put into our project management software like anything that had come up within the past week or if we had random thoughts when we were at the gym saying, hey, it’d
be a great idea to do this marketing initiatives or do this new cold emailing outreach project. Those are the things that we’ll get into there and we’ll talk about, spend enough time so that we at least flush out the idea because I think more often
than not, they’re good ideas in theory, but when Jeff and I talk through them, we’re like, maybe we shouldn’t do that because that’s not going to be a moneymaker. It just doesn’t make sense for us right now.
So we’ll push it to another quarterly review out in the future, but it definitely helps us from the distractions throughout the week of saying, hey, we got some important client meetings coming up and we need to do some project-based work starting
this day without the random noise of, hey, what about this marketing task? That’d be so fun. Or hey, what about this operational project that’s going to take three weeks?
It helps us focus and hone back into what’s really important and what’s driving revenue at our firm.
There are so many good ideas and they would be good if we were 30 people, right? But we’re only two people, and so we can’t be doing everything all at once.
Yeah, I think that’s what you quickly realize is like, there’s always so much more to do, can be doing, should be doing, but maybe just can’t do.
And it’s like, hey, focus on, you know, what you’re good at, what’s bringing people in the front door, how you’re connecting with people. But yeah, there’s all, I tell her, but there’s always a bigger boat.
There’s always another firm doing more than you, making more than you. And it’s like, it’s trying to like, play this game of like, catch up isn’t good for you.
It’s just focus on what you’re good at and focus on kind of growing at the level that you’re at now and kind of making those incremental adjustments.
Because I know for both of our firms, it’s just going to be like, growth, growth, growth, growth, growth.
And then we’ll hit that hockey stick moment where you’re like, thank God we have these processes in place and we’ve been doing it from the beginning versus like scrambling to get the right things in place at that moment.
I think that’s what all business owners try and prep for, is that kind of hockey stick moment where growth far exceeds kind of what you’ve been doing prior. And it’s just a testament of the work that you’ve put in and the relationships you’ve made.
But you have to be thinking about that moment from day one or else you’re just going to be absolutely screwed and potentially end up ruining the reputation of your firm when you get to kind of that moment.
Yeah, well said. Yeah, well said. Actually, I got a question for you, Sean.
Like when you talk about the typical advisor, you know, working in the past life, Edward Jones, like I can imagine you saw a lot of advisors who were just sales focused, right?
Or the ones that are just chasing the next opportunity without regards of setting up their business for success. Like did you like how early on did you identify that? And you were like, I am not going to be that person.
I think Edward Jones is an interesting place because all the systems are in place for you.
So if you can find somebody to run at your clip, like if you can find a, we called them BOAs or branch office administrators, basically an assistant, a CSA kind of person, client service associate. If they could keep up with you, great.
And you had that drive, awesome. So they had the infrastructure, but there’s other places where, yeah, they just, you know, it’s actually just, it’s your personality. There was one guy at Edward Jones that I worked with, he called clients deals.
Like how many deals did you make this month? Like that was a mindset for some people. I’m like, they’re not deals.
These are human beings. So if you run at that pace, you could sell them a lot to get them on board.
And then you drop, your quality drops off, your service drops off, because you’re continually just pushing to the next one, pushing to the next one versus like, I was always kind of, I liked, I like the fact that these people trust you with their
money. I have control issues about that. And I want to make sure like it’s a repeatable process, nothing is dropped. And so I had a much slower like acquisition of clients.
Like I wasn’t the guy who put on, you know, 40, 50 new clients a year. I was lucky if I did 20 to 25, because that was just the pace that I liked. And that was me controlling quality versus quantity.
So yeah, man, I saw kind of all of it. I saw people who had been doing it for 20 years that never needed to put another client on again. And they were just kind of riding the coattails of their success for that last day, you know, two decades.
Then I saw people who come out just swinging and throwing anything that can fog a mirror on as a client, which is great until it’s not great, which like we just talked about, there’s a point to where you have to decide as a business owner, hey, I
can’t work with everybody. I can’t help everybody. I can only be stretched so far. And then I didn’t know this, but the success rate of a financial advisor, this was Edward Jones statistics.
I would imagine it’s pretty consistent across the industry is about 20%. So for every 10 new financial advisors that said firm hires, only two of them statistically are going to make it.
And that’s organically, meaning like they have to build a practice on their own versus like, hey, my dad’s retiring and giving me $100 million practice. Like congrats, good on you or whatever.
But that was another interesting thing to see was the amount of people who just struggled and struggled to make a business out of this industry because it is extremely hard. And I think anything you do creating a business is extremely hard.
And we talked about this on the last episode when we had my buddy Dale Schaefer on. He’s a financial planner who focuses his practice solely on working with business owners.
And he said it well, like I think we’ve all heard is, you know, you have to get to that four to five year mark to really submit your flag and be like, okay, like I’ve made it like this is going to work.
But that first four to five years, you’re well underpaid. You’re working a ton of hours. And some people just aren’t cut out for that.
Just it’s not going to jive with them or their family. Like they may not have that ability to grind like they need to because they have to support their family or be do things for family. So yeah, man, it’s a crazy, crazy world starting a business.
And you really it really becomes a family and your baby to try and make this thing grow.
What did the what did the financial those eight out of ten financial advisors? What did they end up doing commonly? Did you see like any trends like what they would go do afterwards?
That’s a good question.
I think some would just leave the industry in general. I don’t know what they’d fall back on. The only people you heard about continuously are the ones that stayed.
They would go work for what we called home office, you know, take take more of that W2 administrative role within Edward Jones.
Right.
So that was, you know, they’re already employed by Edward Jones is, you know, hit the job board and see if there’s an opening internally versus that sales capacity. Working in sales is brutal.
I mean, you’re always on like, my mind doesn’t shut off when it 5 o’clock comes around. Like, I’ll wake up in the middle of the night, just like I’m sure you guys do. And be like, oh my God, did I make that note?
Did I remember to do that? Like, hey, this is a good idea I have for my clients. And I think if they knew that, like if they knew how much I’m sure, I’m sure you guys do it in your case, too.
Like if they knew how much we kind of thought about them or we’re trying to think about ways to help them out. For me, it’s financially for you guys. It’s like systematizing and more efficiency.
I think if they knew how much they were on our mind, it would be an even better relationship. Just because it’s not like a nine to five for us as an entrepreneur. It’s always on all the time, waking you up in the middle of the night.
Sometimes I get decided to wake up at 6 a.m. and come in here and answer an email or get back to somebody or just start the day. And that isn’t the case when you’re a W2 person and you’re just punching that clock.
And it’s a different drive, a different animal when you’re running your own place. Any other questions? You guys got some good ones.
Okay.
I like your hat.
Thanks. I ordered more. I’ll get you guys some hats.
Okay. I promise.
Okay. We’ll return the favor one day soon.
Perfect. All right. Great conversation.
Where I’d love to leave this is the podcast name, Millennial Money Moves. You guys have worked in advisory practices. You’ve helped clients, I’m sure.
You’ve also maybe just seen the backend. But then you’ve also started a business for yourself. Is there any money moves that you saw people making or that you guys have made that you would like to tell your generation?
That’s the whole purpose for this podcast. I just want to tell my generation, here’s what I think you should be doing with your money because I’ve seen it work for very successful people. That’s why I want to disseminate this info downward.
Anything from you guys along those lines?
It’s a really quick one right off the bat. If you are W2 right now, you’re getting your paycheck on your weekly, bi-weekly, monthly basis, just please set up auto pay to a Roth IRA. I’m not going to say any other way.
You have to do it. It’s the easiest way to do it. Don’t think about it.
Even if it’s 50 bucks a month, it’s something, but just something to get you started because that was the very first thing that I did when I got my first job.
I set up my Roth IRA, set up the auto pay, and it saved my life because I did not think about it at all for the first three to like four months of like starting my job.
Because I was so focused on my job and, you know, people can let that time elapse into months, years, and then they start to think, hey, like maybe I should start investing now.
But at that point, it’s not too late, but you should have started a couple of years before when you got the job.
No, well said. I was literally going to joke about even saying, start a Roth IRA, and you did it. No, it’s drastic.
We’ve highlighted it too on the podcast. You have difference in compounding if you start at like 25 versus 35, and how much you can have is wild. So yeah, well said, Matthew.
That is a perfect takeaway that everyone should go with. Jeff, anything from you?
Yeah, so this is for people starting businesses, right?
Love it. Yes, please.
Yeah, what’s the worst? It’s just a question, like, what’s the worst that happens? They can just think about that as much as they want.
What’s the worst-case scenario?
Yeah, it’s not that bad.
No, I mean-
It’s not that bad, right?
So if you lost everything, I’m pretty sure most people would still have a bed and food and stuff like that. So I mean, I think you only live once, and if you want to start a company, do it today or tomorrow.
Don’t wait until next week, because next week will be next year. And the worst that happens is not that bad, to be honest, but people get scared and worried. But what are the people that are super risky?
Are they risk averse?
No, risk averse is like they’re not willing to take on risk. So yeah, they’re risk averse. Now then, they’re just the risky people.
Yeah, we’ll just call them risky people.
Yeah, just be-
The adrenaline junkies, yeah, just go for it. No, you’re absolutely right. There’s always a reason not to start a business, just like there’s always a reason not to invest.
Like if you hold yourself back from either one of those, like you’re just delaying, you’re just getting further behind that curve, you know.
I think if you’re wanting to start a business, talk to the people that know you and love you most and run this kind of idea by them and not looking for their ultimate, you know, buy off or write off for you, but just, you know, for me, it was my
fiance Megan. She was just like, you need to do this. You should have done this six months ago, and I find excuses of, okay, well, maybe this month or maybe next. She’s like, you need to stop doing that.
You need to actually, anyways, have somebody in your corner that, you know, can be a good sounding board, your mom, your fiance, your wife, not your dog, they don’t talk back, but just somebody that you could run this by to kind of help you get
comfortable. And like you said at the beginning, a mentor or just interviewing with other people in the industry that you’re potentially looking to focus in, it’s a great place to just get comfortable and being like, okay, like other people are doing
this, I can do this, here’s how to do it. Awesome, guys, well, this has been a great conversation. Appreciate you both for joining me. Again, Jeff Rusin, Matthew Awai from Advisor Tech Partners.
Please check them out if you’re an advisor out there looking to have your software and systems kind of integrated for more efficient use. Appreciate you both coming on. Thank you everybody for joining us.
We’ll have a good week.
Thank you Sean.
See you guys.