Micah Shilanski:
Your life is a direct reflection of the expectations of your peer group, Tony Robbins.

This is the perfect RIA in case you didn’t know, bringing you all the strategies to help your business grow. Are you happy? Are you satisfied? Are you hanging on the edge of your seat? Sit back and listen in while you feel the beat, yeah. Another myth bites the dust.

Matthew Jarvis:
Hello, everyone. Welcome to another episode of the perfect RIA podcast. I’m your cohost, Matthew Jarvis, and with me as usual, the man, the myth, the legend, Micah Shilanski. Micah, how are you today, buddy?

Micah Shilanski:
I’m doing excellent, bud. You know, we got back from our mastermind trip, and my head is just still reeling with all the things that we talked about and what we went through and all the crap you gave me, and all those wonderful things that go along with it.

Matthew Jarvis:
Yeah, it really was. Now, for those who aren’t familiar with our mastermind, Mike and I have had a mastermind now for a couple of years, and there’s a core four group of us and we’ve expanded it a little bit. But these mastermind sessions are really a time for Micah and I and our other mastermind members to really dig deep, and a lot of harassment of each other and a lot of fun. We got some great skiing in in Denver, but really, we break through a lot of kind of mental barriers and we set a lot of extreme accountability. We want to relay some of that value that we got out to the TPR nation today.

Micah Shilanski:
You know, it’s kind of funny on one of the days, right? Because we like to start off with a fun activity and then we bring business into it, kind of a different way to get your creative juices flowing. One of the coaches that we had there, Adam, Coach Adam, we’ve had him on the pod, right? And he really brought up to the group of asking the question, what do you expect to get out of here? And I remember we were on the lift and we were chatting about that. It was this interesting point that now when I come to these masterminds, before I you used to come with, “Hey, these are the things that I need to achieve. These are the things that needed to get out of this mastermind,” and now I don’t come to that with that same level of expectation, because so often in these masterminds, you guys give me something that I wasn’t even planning on, right? I was planning on A, B and C, and you guys come out of left field with something that I’m doing wrong in my practice, something that I need to improve in my practice, some limiting belief that I have that I had no idea that I even had. You nail me on it and really make me refocus in saying, “You know what? My list wasn’t as important as going and changing these things.” And it’s been a huge value add.

Matthew Jarvis:
Yeah, it really is. Now, I’ve got to say, my number one takeaway from our mastermind was don’t ignore electrical issues in a house that you’re staying in. Just really briefly, there was some weird electrical stuff going on in the house that we kind of ignored. It resulted in the fire department showing up in the middle of the night. So, if there’s electrical issues where you’re staying, don’t ignore those.

Micah Shilanski:
You know, but I got to say, what, there was nine people in there, and you and I were the first ones out. You were definitely the first one out in your skivvies, and I was the next. We were figuring out our battle plan with how to get out of the house and where the smoke and electrical issues were coming from. So, it was a neat real world experience.

Matthew Jarvis:
It really was. It really is. But that’s not really huge take. I would say my biggest takeaway from the mastermind was the importance of a mastermind. This is really the first thing we want to stress in addition to avoiding electrical fires to the TPR nation, is you need to have a mastermind group. Now, ours is pretty formalized these days and we travel around the country to meet each other and he go to skiing and these kinds of things. It does not have to be that elaborate. In fact, one of our mastermind members, Daugherty, he and I were on a virtual mastermind together for about a year before we started meeting in person. Well, we had found each other on the FPA forum and we would talk every six months and check in, “Hey, where are you at on things? What are you struggling with?” And really my biggest thing for masterminds, and Micah, I would love to hear yours. You alluded to it earlier, is when I get stuck thinking something has to be this way, the mastermind is really a great way to say it, “No, it doesn’t actually have to be that way. You choose it that way and we can decide whether that’s a good choice or not.” But this is not gravity. This is you choosing to be this way.

Micah Shilanski:
Yeah, and I think we’ve talked about this before on the pods is we came up with that expression, is this is a gravity question? Right? This was probably a year ago we talked about it on the pod, but basically that concept was there. Sometimes we hold on to some things that are so real. We think they’re like gravity, right? If I drop this cup, it’s going to fall. But so often we’re holding on to things that are not real, and we’re calling that, is that a gravity question? Right? Are you holding onto something that you think is a law that you think is immovable that you think has to happen, when really it has no reality? And I think a representation of that, one of the people that was there at the mastermind runs a phenomenal practice, does a really great job. He’s a hell of a guy. I really enjoyed getting to know him, but he had some really limiting beliefs and really fixed mindset on where he was in his practice. It was about minimums. He could not charge a minimum. Right? That was a big thing that he said is, “In my area, I can’t have a minimum.” And that’s some really limiting language that you’re imposing right there.

Matthew Jarvis:
Yeah. I’m glad you brought up that example because that was the one I was really thinking of. He said, “Well, I can’t turn people away. If someone’s referred to me in my town, I can’t turn them away.” And Micah, I think you and I were clamoring to be the first one to say, “Really? Is that a law in your town? That’s really interesting that law.” And he said, “Well, no, obviously it’s not a law, but we have a small town and people know each other.” And it was interesting. We said, “Well, that’s not a candidate to choose, and let’s run through a couple scenarios.”

Matthew Jarvis:
So I gave him my classic of, “If you’re a heart surgeon and someone comes to you for knee problems, the heart surgeon is not going to say, “Hey, we’re in a small town. I don’t want to turn you away.” The heart surgeon says, “I only do heart surgery.” And this advisor, we said, “Hey, you can do the same thing. You can say, “Wow, love to give you some great advice. I only work with certain people because I have a specialty,” like your heart surgeon. “I recommend you go talk with Joe, and yes I know he’s in the next town, but that’s who you need to talk to.”

Micah Shilanski:
Right. And just because of our geographical location, it doesn’t force us to have to make decisions. We’re still choosing to make decisions. You don’t live in China, and if you do, I’m sorry to hear that, right? I mean, the government is not going to kick down your door or bolt your door shut or rip you out of your house at night or anything else because you say no to something. These are all choices, and we’re playing a little bit of word games with this, but I can’t stress the importance of this enough, because this goes how you speak to yourself internally is really going to stand out with what your actions are and how you present things. And if you have that limiting mindset, and again, he runs a phenomenal practice, he has great stuff going on.

Micah Shilanski:
He even did some amazing business while we were there, he knocked our socks off. I mean, phenomenal guy, but it’s all those little details that, again, going back to what I said, one of my biggest takeaways, it’s not what I go into the masterminds which you guys call out. I would say the same thing. He didn’t come in with this concept in here, but a great mastermind group is going to be able to look at it and say, “No, no, no. You have a limiting issue. You have a limiting belief. You have to fix this language. Whether you choose to do it or not as your choice, but now it’s at least aware of an issue that you need to fix.”

Matthew Jarvis:
Yeah. I know that we usually save action items for the end of the podcast, but this one is so powerful. I don’t want to let it go by. That would be that I would challenge all of the members of the TPR nation to really watch your language. Anytime you’re saying I can’t, I should, I have to, I must, really step back and say, “I choose to. I choose to do this. I choose to do that.” And then you can, Micah, to your point, now it’s no longer a wall. Now you have power around that. I used to brush this stuff off as semantics, as woo woo talk or whatever, but it makes all the difference in the world. As soon as you say, “I have to do this,” you have no power. When you say, “I choose to,” right? “I choose to be in the office at eight o’clock, I choose to not have a minimum. I choose to…” whatever it is, “I choose to deliver massive value.” All of those things are now in your control.

Micah Shilanski:
Yeah. That’s so important. All right, so the language is one really great aspect of it. You know, I would say another thing that really came back in the mastermind that I want to talk about, because we brought in some other coaches in our mastermind. We brought in some in-person, we brought in some virtual. I think going forward we’re probably going to do virtual. I don’t think the in-person is really working out too well. But it was interesting with one of the in-person coaches that we brought on and we were chatting with and kind of going through, he was really focused on a lot of business metrics that were there. This is where I’m going to say people get into playing office, and it’s just one of my things that just drives me nuts is when people are pretending to work.

Micah Shilanski:
Now, there’s pretending to work, like I’m surfing on the internet and I’m playing office and I’m doing “research”. Right? Which really doesn’t matter. But then there’s also playing office where you’re developing 16,000 different spreadsheets or 16,000 different views of your practice that really don’t matter. So, running a business like a business is so key. So, really basic one of the things is what are your KPIs? What are your targets? Let’s just talk on your P and L, your profit and loss. Two biggest KPIs that you need to be looking at, in my opinion, number one is what’s your gross income? Number two, what’s your EBOC? And that tells you 98% of the picture right there is those two figures.

Matthew Jarvis:
Yeah. The only other figure I would throw in there that’s not on your P and L but it’s equally critical is how many days in the office did it take you to get there? Right? If we have two offices, and we’ve talked about this example, and they’re both doing $1 million gross and a half million net, one’s working 80 hours a week and the other one’s averaging 20 hours a week. I want to be in the 20 hour a week practice. So, I would throw that third number between those three. And Micah, to your point on playing office, if you reflect back, we spent, I think we might’ve spent almost an hour as a group dissecting, “What’s your earnings per advisor and what’s your earnings per person?” It’s so seductive to get sucked into these numbers. Then it was kind of like, “Wait a second. Really we don’t care about any of this. Are you delivering massive value? Are you running a profitable firm, and are your profits growing?” And the rest of the numbers can really be ignored and that time can be spent somewhere else.

Micah Shilanski:
Yeah, very much. And so let’s do a little clarification. So, gross means gross, right? Gross is what was billed to the client. This is what I’m calling the gross number that’s going to be there. This is important especially because we have a lot… I’m sorry, is your meter up, Jarvis? You got to put another quarter in?

Matthew Jarvis:
I don’t even want to confess what that sound was.

Micah Shilanski:
Yeah, okay. So, I like to say grosses what’s being billed to the client, because then it’s the same across the board. It’s not if you’re in a Wirehouse and there’s a haircut being taken or you’re at a BD, what was billed to the client, and then he EBOC, earnings before owner’s comp, is really that next number that you need to be there. So, I want to know how much are you taking out before the owner has taken out any compensation? That’s really your profitability. Or how much is the owner making? Right? This is really what I want to know, and that explains those metrics that you need to focus on for the business.

Matthew Jarvis:
Well, and Micah, I want to hit on that point one more time, because there was an advisor that called into our mastermind for a little bit, and we won’t call out who he was or what group he was with, but he kind of brushed over how much was getting billed to the client versus how much was getting paid to him. And so we kind of poked a little bit, and it turned out that his all in fee to the client was like 1.7, which as we’ve talked about is not unreasonable, but the amount coming to him was just a fraction of that. But he was overlooking, he was saying his gross is what went to his office. And Micah, to your point, the gross is what’s being pulled out of the client’s account, right? That’s what the client is paying. And if you’re giving up a third or a half to somebody else, that’s on you. Don’t say that that’s just free money or something like that.

Micah Shilanski:
And this is an important too when we’re starting to compare practices to find out what are areas that we can improve. And there was another advisor I met at a conference, and he was saying that he was running a 95% profitability or something like that. I was like, “Wow, that’s amazing.” Right? “Tell me about that.” Because he had like 115 million or 120 million in assets. So, I go chatting with him, basically he’s at a BD, and after the haircut, what he gets deposited in, only five percent requires him to run his business because he’s on a 30% haircut or 40% haircut. I forgot what it was. It was a huge haircut. So, the BDS is taking all of this and “running it.” Okay, come on. That’s an expense, guys. That was money that was taken from the client and didn’t end up in your bank account. That is an expense that’s there. You got to look at these numbers accurately. All right? So, running a business like a business, focusing on the right numbers, that was another takeaway that I really had from our mastermind. What’s another one? Jarvis?

Matthew Jarvis:
You know, another one, and I notice this again, this might be a selection bias, but all of the successful advisors I run into invest very heavily in self-improvement. You and I talk a lot about our own self improvement. Of course, the TPR nation is invested in self-improvement because they’re here on this podcast. But each member of that group that had achieved real success, they had personal coaches, they belonged to masterminds, they’d attended group coaching programs. They were investing tens of thousands of dollars a year, and it might be easy for a younger advisor, and I know I had this head trash before when I was early in my career. A, I can’t afford that. But I think the reality is you can’t afford not to do that. I know that’s cliche, but if you’re not in a mastermind, if you’re not in some kind of group coaching program or some kind of edification program like the backstage pass, or we’ve had Joe Lucas on the podcast, we’ve had John Baron on the podcast, we’ve had Coach Adam on the podcast, having these people on, Colin Hallinan on the podcast, this is essential for success. Micah, would you feel otherwise? I mean, I know you’ve invested heavily in self-improve and continue to do so.

Micah Shilanski:
Oh, it is a must. You must take money out for self improvement. The way I like to do this is you look at your comp. I’m a big buckets guy, right? I like buckets when you’re doing clients planning. I also like buckets when I’m doing my own planning to say how things should be set up in and where should my money go? And I got a bucket set up just for PD, just for personal development. And really the whole concept of that PD bucket is that is a burn bucket. So, I put money into that account and that is money that I am earmarked to go directly into it. That’s a substantial amount, and I take it off my gross income. So, whatever my gross income is, I take a heavy percentage of that. It’s dumped right into a PD budget, and that’s the money that we look at and say, “Great, how do I get a coach? How do I improve something in my life? What do I do?” And it’s use or lose. If I don’t burn it, then I have to give the money away to charity, which isn’t a big stick cause I kind of like that, but it’s a forcing mechanism, if you will, to get me to use that money for improvement.

Matthew Jarvis:
Yeah, no, interesting. And this might be a tiny bit self serving because we recently opened up the backstage pass, which has been a real great success, but we followed up on people in the nation that haven’t signed up for it, and we heard from a lot of people, they’re saying, “Well, I’m part of a bigger firm. Someone else has to make that decision. I’ve got to wait for so and so. My partner, my father, my mother, my neighbor.” I don’t know who they’re getting the permission from, and my thought was, “Boy, you’re really limiting your success by saying, “Hey, I’m not going to succeed or Excel unless somebody else pays for it.” I think regardless of where you’re at in an organization, you need to make the commitment. Yes, it would be ideal if your company pays for it, but if you’re going to wait for them to promote you, you might be waiting a long time. If you want to excel inside an organization or on your own, you with your money need to invest in success.

Micah Shilanski:
Yeah. I think I want to give this credit to Brian Tracy because I’m pretty sure that’s where I got it from. But his comment was very much the same thing of saying, “Look, you are the company of you. I don’t care what letterhead is on your business card. You are the company of you, and what are you going to do to improve?” I’ve a good wholesaler buddy of mine, and I give him so much crap all the time because he won’t do anything unless the company’s going to pay for it. He’s not going to do training unless the company is going to pay for it. He’s not going to do this stuff unless the company is going to pay for it. But his compensation is directly related to his personal development. And guess what? So is yours, right? So, why wouldn’t you invest in that? This is about you becoming a better you so that you can help more clients, you can deliver more massive value. So, a PD budget, and we’ll get into this in the action items, man, that personal development budget is just a must in my world.

Matthew Jarvis:
Yeah. You know, one other lesson I would throw out from the mastermind, something I was reminded of, is the importance of spending time around other advisors around other entrepreneurs. Ideally, in a perfect world, you’re spending time around advisors and entrepreneurs that are more successful than you are. That’s a bit of a catch 22, because, for example, Micah and I aren’t inviting people to our masterminds that are dramatically below our level of success. We’re trying to find people above ours. But it’s so important to take that time. And I think every person that was in our group to a T said, “Boy, this is really one of the best weeks I’ve had in a long time because I was able to just get out. We had common concerns, we had common obstacles, we recharged each other, and we really had a great time.” So, I just can’t stress enough the importance of having some kind of group like this.

Micah Shilanski:
And I think the importance of these groups, right, Jarvis, is really taking them on yourself and doing everything yourself and not be involving any delegation, not involving any teamwork, but you know-

Matthew Jarvis:
This is one of these moments when… I’m like, “Did I fade out for a second? Am I not paying attention?”

Micah Shilanski:
We’re doing a video call, and I love seeing your reaction to stuff like that. All right, so flipping it the other way, right? This is one of those things that if you do it yourself and say, “I’m going to set this up, I’m going to run it,” blah, blah, blah, “I’m going to create this event to happen,” it’s just not going to happen because life gets busy. This is where delegation comes in. And There’s not a highly successful person that was at our mastermind that does not delegate, or the other way to say it, every single highly successful person that I’ve met delegates things out, and this has to be you. This, I would say, would be another takeaway, is what is your system for delegating? What is your system for putting forcing mechanisms in place so that you can be successful?

Matthew Jarvis:
Yeah, it really is. Just one other note on masterminds, it took me several years… so, I kind of am the lead of our mastermind, I don’t want to say that just to, to toot my own horn, that’s not what that’s about. It took me a few years-

Micah Shilanski:
No, I delegated it, so it worked out just fine.

Matthew Jarvis:
It took me a few years to put together this mastermind. I had several false starts. I had tried to meet up with all the other RIAs in my geographical region, and that totally skunked out. I had put stuff up on the FPA forum. I had been to the FPA events. I really struck out several times with a mastermind, but I was just really committed to making that happen, and so I would just, every quarter I would work and say, “All right, I need to find someone to be in my mastermind,” and that’s how I met each of the guys that are in our mastermind, and now we have a great group. So, I throw that out there, don’t be discouraged if you have a couple of false starts or a couple of failed attempts. We’ve had people try to use our mastermind, it just wasn’t a good fit. But it’s worth the effort.

Micah Shilanski:
And we’ve both been in some failed masterminds. Right? I’ve been in some other ones as well, and there’s nothing bad against those, it just wasn’t the right mix of advisers. It just wasn’t the right focus that we were looking on, and it just wasn’t a good fit, and that’s okay. You got to find one that pushes you to the next level. It’s not just about a fun weekend or retreat or just BSing, it’s about really pushing that needle to the next level.

Matthew Jarvis:
Yeah, it really is. It really is.

Micah Shilanski:
So, I would say another thing on the pushing that needle to the next level, and forgive us a little bit, this is a little bit of a recap, but this is what we talked about in the mastermind as well. One of the things that really push us to the next level is massive accountability. And I got to say, I get pushback when I talk to other advisors about this, because they think our accountability is too big. And so what I’m talking about with massive accountability is that if you are going to do something, what’s the stick if you do not? Right? You can do it from a rewards basis, you could also do it from a penalty basis. I think doing it from a penalty basis on certain things motivates us a lot more, especially if you pick the right penalty. It’s really going to motivate you not to do things.

Micah Shilanski:
So, for example, one of the guys in our mastermind, he was just there pretty much for skiing. He’s a really great guy. And in talking with him, he doesn’t delegate anything. He doesn’t have a personal assistant, he doesn’t do these things, and we’re just kind of going nuts, and you’re like, “No, this is what you need to go and do.” And he’s like, “No, I really don’t need it,” and we’re like, “No, you absolutely have to do this.” And we got him to make a pretty fairly accountable for a pretty substantial penalty to the opposite political contribution of which that he likes to make, and he got really mad when we started talking about this, and we were like, “Sweet, this is the action item. This is the accountability item.” So, he has a limited time that he has to go hire a personal assistant. He has to keep them on for X amount of time, and if he doesn’t do it, he owes a pretty substantial check to the opposite political fund than he would like to donate to. This is really important because it’s going to force him to take action, and you know it’s a good stick, when all of a sudden the next day he’s like, “Hey, I’ve already looked this up. I’m already moving on this. I’ve already contacted these companies.” Great. You’ve got the right accountability item in place.

Matthew Jarvis:
Yeah, I’m 100% with you, Micah, and I know we beat this drum all the time. I want to highlight just something on this stick versus a carrot. I think a carrot would be ideal. In my experience, it rarely works. And I’ll give you a quick personal example. Micah and I committed to a reward of doing a pretty elaborate motorcycle trip once the perfect RIA nation got to a certain level, and it got to that level and we haven’t scheduled the trip. Why? Because we’re just busy. It’s like, “All right, well, we earned it. Next.” Right? And this is kind of our entrepreneurial mindset. We’re like, “Well, I don’t have time to take that reward,” and you rob yourself of that. Where that stick, this guy that that Micah spoke of, we’re excited to follow up with him and make sure he does it. So, yes, in a perfect world, it would be all carrots, real world sticks work really well.

Micah Shilanski:
Yeah. It’s all about finding what motivates you, and this is where the mastermind group is going to come in because they are going to find the things that motivate you. They are going to find those hot buttons, they are going to find those dollar amounts, they are going to find those limits that you can hit really, really quickly to get you to move the needle to get to that next level. So important.

Matthew Jarvis:
Yep. Well, should we jump into some action items?

Micah Shilanski:
Let’s do it. What have you got for us?

Matthew Jarvis:
Well, I would say first and foremost, an action item would be to start looking for a mastermind group, right? So, really put yourself out there, whether it’s people from your advisory group. I would say someone not from your company, ideally, someone that you don’t view as a competitor. If you view them as a competitor, you’re not going to be transparent and authentic with each other. Right? Theoretically, Micah and I could be competitors, but not really. Right? We have this mindset of there’s enough business out there for everybody.

Micah Shilanski:
Yeah, totally an abundance mindset. I like that. I’m going to say one of the things is I want you to get really intentional on your EBOC. What is that? And for our backstage pass members, I’m going to throw up a sample P and L that you could put together, and again, I don’t care if you’re part of a group, if you’re part of a larger organization, you are the business of you. What is your P and L? Right? This is a really, really important thing that I’ll lead to my next action item as well. But I would say focusing on that EBOC, earnings before owner’s comp, what is that number? And making sure you’re running a profitable practice, because keep in mind, the three tenants of the perfect RA, one of them is a 50% profitability. We put that up there for a very particular reason. You have to run a business, otherwise when the next market downturn comes, when you get a revenue cut and you go out of business, all those people you can’t help. That doesn’t help anyone. You have to run a profitable business to be in business to help the people in the longterm.

Matthew Jarvis:
Yep, and just to be clear, and I know we’ve talked about this before, but I see it manipulate all the time. EBOC is the number that goes on your tax return plus retirement plan contributions. That’s it. I mean, Micah and I, in fact, Micah, you called me out on this last year. I said, “Well, Micah, here’s my numbers,” because you and I are very transparent with each other and our numbers, and I said, “But really it should be this because we put a $100,000 into software development,” and you said, “Wrong. Your EBOC is the number that goes on your tax return. I don’t care about this other stuff.”

Micah Shilanski:
That’s right. It was poor business decision. I don’t know what to tell you. Next.

Matthew Jarvis:
Yep. So, gross is, as we said, the number that’s pulled out of the client’s account, net is the number that lands on your tax return. And again, you can add I think to that retirement plan contributions if you want to. That’s what I do.

Micah Shilanski:
Yeah, and it’s really important too because Jarvis and I are in a friendly competition and I want to beat him. So, I want his number to be lower. This is a good point. Another action item that I want to have out there, and we talked about it before, but I’m talking to a ton of advisors and hearing that they still don’t have it, you need to have a PD budget. You need to have a personal development budget. And here’s what I’m going to say. It’s five percent of your gross or 10% of your net, however which way you want to slice it. But this would be an ideal target that’s going to be there. So, if you make $500,000 a year in gross revenue, that is not EBOC. I use the term gross. That is gross revenue times five is 25 grand. You need to be putting $25,000 back into yourself.

Micah Shilanski:
The most important thing with this, and this is just what I tell clients, is I want sticky changes, right? So, is five percent is too high because you’re doing zero, start with one. Start with one percent, right? Start with something, have money moved into a separate account. Don’t mix it with all the other stuff because you’re not going to be honest with yourself. Put it in a separate bank account, have it just a personal development count. Stick the money inside of there and use it, self-serving by the backstage pass. Right? This is what you should use it for. But in addition to that, right, get coaching, get programs, become a better you so that you can move the needle.

Matthew Jarvis:
Yep. I would say additional action item, and this is something I used to do for many years, and again, it felt a little hokey at the time, but it made a big difference. I used to wear a rubber band on my wrist, and I would snap that rubber band every time I use limiting language. By the way, snap the back of your wrist so you don’t damage your nerves and your tendons on the underside of your wrist. Doesn’t need to be the point where you’re drawing blood or something, but every time you hear yourself say can’t, must, have to, any kind of limiting, just… because what it does is it creates kind of a physical reaction for your brain. Like, “Hey, I don’t want to use that language.” Shoulds, any of that kind of stuff, just give that thing a quick snap. You’ll look like a crazy person, but that’s okay. Crazy people make a lot of money.

Micah Shilanski:
I love it. Hey, what about doing a swear jar in the office? What if you put a limiting language jar, so anyone in your team uses limited language, they got to put a couple bucks in the jar for an office party or a coffee breaker or something of that nature?

Matthew Jarvis:
That would be a great one, because I always say it bothers me when I hear other people say it as well. In my team, we really focus… in fact, my kids Micah, you know this having spent time around my kids, we’re not allowed to use limiting language in our house. So, if you say, “I’m not good at something,” it has to be followed with a yet. It’s got too extreme. My kids are, “I’m happy with this,” but it’s kind of funny. I’ll say something like, “Hey, this shoe doesn’t fit,” and they’ll say, “Dad, not with that attitude.”

Micah Shilanski:
You got to love it. Right?

Matthew Jarvis:
Right.

Micah Shilanski:
At least they’re listening.

Matthew Jarvis:
Yeah, “We’re not going to make it on time.” “Not with that attitude, dad.” “Well, fair point. Fair point.”

Micah Shilanski:
Fair point. Perfect. All right, so we went through a bunch of action items that was here. This, again, was just some great takeaways that we got from the mastermind, and find one, right? If you want to be part of ours, you’re welcome to apply. Again, we’re at really slow growth with that. We’ve got a great group, so we’re looking for just the right people, really slow with that one. But feel free to create your own. Reach out in the network. If you’re part of the backstage pass, we’re getting that forum set up, go ahead and reach out to other members. See if you can facilitate that. Get other two or three people involved, have quick conversations, someone to keep you accountable, someone to push back on you and not just give you, “Ata boys.” So important to push that needle.

Matthew Jarvis:
Yep. And then the very last point before we go, the perfect RIA t-shirts are pretty awesome. Micah and I have recorded some 100K challenges for the backstage pass members, so if you don’t have one yet, give the podcast five stars and share it with us on social media, and we’ll get a t-shirt mailed out to you. If by chance you did that and we didn’t get a shirt out to you yet, send us a quick message and we’ll delegate that to someone to get the shirt out to you.

Micah Shilanski:
Yes, and I’m starting to see them pop up on Twitter and LinkedIn as well. It’s pretty cool. People are taking pictures of them in their shirts and sharing them out, so I’m loving it.

Matthew Jarvis:
Very good. Well, until next time, happy planning.

Micah Shilanski:
Happy planning.

Hold on before we go, something that you need to know, this isn’t tax, legal or investment advice, that isn’t our intent. Information designed to change lives, financial planning can make you thrive. Start today, don’t think twice. Be a better husband, father, mother and wife. The perfect RIA, the perfect RIA.