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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. Another myth bites the dust…

Matthew Jarvis: Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of The Perfect RIA Podcast. I am your co-host and co-founder, Matthew Jarvis and with me, the man, the myth, the legend, Micah Shilanski. Micah, how are you today my friend?

Micah Shilanski: I am doing excellent bud. Super excited to be doing another podcast and I really enjoy all of this that we put out. And quite frankly, we wrapped up a couple of weeks ago a phenomenal nationwide webinar. We had a ton of people on it. A lot of people jumping into Invictus and a lot of great excitement about that. And that is around the quarter to be launching. So, what an exciting time to be talking about midyear things that we just need to conquer.

Matthew Jarvis: Yeah. And on that note, Micah, it’s really exciting to see how the listeners, right? You, the person listening to this podcast, how this nation has grown. What started as we famously talked about, about Micah and I doing a drunken podcast in a bar after a mastermind has become this community of 20,000 downloads a month strong of advisors sharing what really works in their practice and working with each other for that extreme accountability required to take your practice to the next level.

So, as we always talk about, we’re only interested on this podcast about talking about what works. And today, Micah, we want to talk about the importance of doing a midyear check. And I actually remember I guess maybe it was last year or year before last, we did a midyear podcast where I had realized that my numbers were falling behind midyear and that it was a good time to look and say, “Great. I got to up my game,” because as your opening quote says, “The second half of the year, ain’t going to be any different than the first half of the year if you’re doing the same thing.”

Micah Shilanski: And that’s really where we fool ourselves, right? And I think this is a great reminder for me as well because I have not done my midyear check-in. We’re recording this of course in advance. So, it’s something I’m like, “Sweet. I like to do mine after 6:30.” I don’t know why but that’s just when I like to get them done. So, I’ll get it done at the beginning of July and really focus on this thing. So, you know what? I have another six months left kind of, kind of. That right? There’s six months left in the year but I really have three months to get things lined up in order to hit year-end goals.

So, if I’m behind the 8 ball… And I haven’t looked at the numbers. I don’t feel that I am because we’ve looked at other things mid-quarter and it was good but if I’m behind the ball, I got to get the next couple of months that I have to be super active in to get things lined up in my calendar so I can hit year-end numbers. And if I don’t do it in the next couple of months, this year is shot.

Matthew Jarvis: Yeah. Micah, this is really the time to go back and look and say, “Hey, back in December, when I was doing my year-end planning, what goals did I set?” It’s often easy and this is why extreme accountability is critical. It’s easy to let those goals be forgotten. Like, “Hey, I was going to quit doing email this year. I was going to start calling COIs every week. I was going to do these things. And then I forgot about the goal then I pushed it out of mind.” Now is the time to go back and dig out those New Year’s resolutions and say, “This is what I committed to. How far am I?”

Micah Shilanski: Absolutely. From your team, to your family, to yourself, this is what it’s all about. So, Jarvis, let’s dive into a little bit of what does a midyear check-in really look like? And then, what do you do with that data? So, what are some things that we should be looking at? What are things we need to stay away from? And then, of course, as always, pivoting to what do you do next?

Matthew Jarvis: Yeah. Micah, a couple of things we’re going to look at. In fact, I think our next episode or one of our next episodes are really going to dive into some of these numbers. I got to say the first two things I always look at, Micah, gross income and days out of the office. And maybe we can take a second and define both of those because in our industry, these terms are used vaguely and they could mean whatever you want them to mean.

Micah Shilanski: Yeah. No. I think that’s a great thing. I’m going to add in there, EBOC and we’re going to do a special podcast just talking about that, about earnings before owners come, because that again, is a pulse point. I always tell clients, cashflow is the heartbeat of retirement. Well, guess what? EBOC is the heartbeat of a successful lifestyle practice. So, I like to know what that number is in going forward. Then that’s what I do at a high level. Then I like to dive in a little bit further to, say, “Inside of these things. Great. Where’s the office? Where’s the team at? What projects are they working on? What are the world domination activities do you need to be on top of?”

Matthew Jarvis: That’s right. I think the other one I would put on there, of course, days at the office I mentioned that vacation but number of new clients by revenue generated. So, we’ll look and say, “What’s going to be our projected 12 month revenue?” Right? So, if I say, “Hey, I brought in 10 new clients and they’re paying 15,000 each,” I like to look forward and say, “Hey, if this quarter continued for all future quarters, what’s my run rate?”, if you will.

So, a couple of things on that, Micah. So, on gross income, I’m looking at… Because I don’t have anybody taking a cut of my action, I’m looking at, “Hey, what is our gross billings?” Just what’s showing in QuickBooks as gross billing or what is our billing software showing that we deducted? If you’re a part of some kind of grid, a broker dealer, another RA, you really need to be looking at that top, top, top, top line so that you’re being honest with yourself about expenses. And that’s the hardest line to fib. Otherwise, some days, I’ll calculate it this way and some days I’ll calculate it the other depending on how I’m feeling.

Micah Shilanski: It was really funny. Back when we were with a BD, we made a change in our bookkeeping that was there and the bookkeeper accountant really didn’t like this but I adjusted our gross numbers in QuickBooks for gross numbers. What was debited from the client account? What was the gross? Then I put our BD in there as a line item on our PNL, taken money off the top. Now, we could argue, was that the BD was a clearing room? Doesn’t matter. Wasn’t going to us. And what was that line item?

And you want to talk about an eyeopening number Jarvis because when you don’t see it, because it’s all pre-gridded and it’s all percentage points and you’re not really giving it a dollar amount or it’s one month at a time you’re looking at it. You put that sucker in a 12 month interval and you start realizing what you’re paying for. And this is great. How much value am I getting from that? And that’s the purpose of the EBOC and the gross numbers. It’s not complaining about what you’re paying for it. No. This is the deal that you made. Now, the question is, what value are you getting out of it and is what you’re getting out of it worth some multitude of what you’re paying? And if it is, rock on, that is outstanding. And if it’s not perfect, it’s time to make a change.

Matthew Jarvis: Yeah. Not to harp on that one but Micah, you and I talked to an advisor several… Maybe a year ago now. And he’s part of a big group. We don’t need to name any names. And we said, “Well, how much is that group charging you for the services they provide?” And he says, “Great news. They’re not charging me anything.” Immediate alarm bells go off. So, we said, “Well, wait. How much is deducted from the client account?” He says, “Well, I deduct one for me. Okay. And then this group deducts another 50 basis points on top of this.”

“Oh, so, they’re charging you 50 basis points?” And he says, “No. No. No. No. No. They’re not charging me. They’re charging to the client.” “Well, hang on, the client’s okay with one five coming out of their account plus, plus, plus. We’ll set that aside for their discussion and you’re getting one?” So, Micah, I think to your point, you need to make sure that everything on your expense, the expenses, especially top-line stuff, you’re saying how much in dollars am I paying out here and then what am I getting in return? Whether it’s the grid or your copy machine or your tech support, everything.

Micah Shilanski: Yeah. Just know where that value is coming from, really important, right?

Matthew Jarvis: All right.

Micah Shilanski: So, what’s the gross, gross number that’s coming out? What’s that EBOC number? Now, quickly to define this earnings before owner’s comp, this is what’s going to go online nine of your tax return. So, after… I don’t care if it’s a paid in a W2, you get paid in a 1099, you get paid in a K1, do not care. What is your taxable gross income on your tax return plus retirement contributions? Because that’s your money, not payroll taxes, not anything else inside of there. What’s the amount that’s totally paid to you? I don’t care if you’re finding clever ways to deduct your home and your automobile, that doesn’t count added back in. We have to have a simple number here.

Matthew Jarvis: Yeah. In fact, we’re working on a benchmark. The industry benchmarks are all garbage in my opinion because they’re not verified. They’re voluntary. We have a big group of our backstage pass members, our Invictus members who say, “Hey, we’re willing to have our information audited, have independently reviewed to form a benchmark. If by the way you’re interested in participating in that, let us know, shoot an email to lifestyle at the perfect RIA and mention that you’re willing to participate in the benchmarking study, which requires a P&L out of your QuickBooks or equivalent and your tax return.”

So, this is a real benchmarking study but benchmark or not, you need to be looking at this for yourself and not saying, “Hey, I’ll look at it at the end of the year and I’ll be surprised.” No. This is where you say, “How far have I come? Where am I spending my money? Where am I earning my money? How much am I taking home?”

Micah Shilanski: Perfect. Days off. Pretty simple to measure. What is your written definition of a day off, right? This is how we’re going to define it. So, I defined my days off as slightly different than Jarvis’s. Guess what? It really doesn’t matter. You’re solving for you. I’m solving for me, right? My day off is when am not coming to the office and be my work does not interfere with my family. What does that mean? If I get up early and I want to pound something out before the family wakes up, the kids get up, we homeschool, right? Before it interferes with their day, then rock on. I get to do that. And I still get to count as a free day because once I pivot 8:30, 9 o’clock in the morning and it’s family time, sweet, it’s family time from then on. So, what is that and how are you tracking those days off?

Matthew Jarvis: Micah, I’m curious logistically, how are you tracking that number throughout the year? Like for me, for example, I keep a wall calendar and I just mark out, I put an X on each day. I take off and I write the number. So, if I took January 1st off, which I did, I would write an X on January 1. I would put one and then 2, 3, 4. So, by the end of the year, I’ve got my 250, 260, whatever the number is.

Micah Shilanski: Perfect. Why keep it tracking too is, one, we have our surge calendar, right? And so, the office keeps track of those days. And so, I know it’s days I’m working. And so, that way I don’t have to work on those. Then on my internal P&L sheet, my revenue sheet… And I got a Google Excel sheet where I track my revenue since the last, I don’t know, since 2006, whatever that time period is. I started tracking 2010. I actually track on side of there. What are those workdays?

And I like that right there because it’s a little extra punitive for me. What didn’t I get done? So, now all of a sudden I’m looking at this and I don’t get to blame it on surge meetings. I don’t get to blame it on this. No. No. No. Surge meetings has its own time. It’s a lot of in the calendar. This is time that I did crappy planning.

Matthew Jarvis: Right in office. Right?

Micah Shilanski: Yeah. Exactly. I did a poor job planning and this is what it costs me. So, I like to see that as a separate number so I know what it’s for now.

Matthew Jarvis: Micah, another one that’s really high on the list to assess your year, especially in these corona years, where conference are off, is what have you been doing for personal development? A lot of advisors that we’ve talked to have been slacking off on personal development though I would sort of question what some of their PD was before. If you’re just going to a conference and sitting in the back and drinking with your buddies, that’s not personal development, that’s just hanging out, which has its own place. But how much-

Micah Shilanski: It’s peer development.

Matthew Jarvis: Yeah. Peer development. How many books have you read? How many new white papers have you looked at? How many quality trainings have you attended? What are you doing to up your game? And then most importantly, what action have you taken from those? I like to go back and say, “Great. What notes did I take and then how many did I actually implement?” And midyear is a good time to look at that.

Micah Shilanski: Oh, yeah. Talking about going to conferences, right? Then you pull out a conference binder and I know with the Rona it’s different but then you can see all of a sudden you pull out the pages of notes and really say, “What did I do or what did I not do? Was that quality time?” Masterminds is another thing I want to make sure we’re thrown in there Jarvis. This is a huge one for us especially is we can pivot in those masterminds for the PD side. Also PD doesn’t have to be business-related. This is personal development. So, this could be what are you striving for in your personal life? Because again, that relates back to the business.

Matthew Jarvis: I’m glad you mentioned that Micah, there’s a nice to be guilty of this. I would spend all of my time and energy on personal development inside of the business but once I started broadened my horizon, getting coaches… And I know you get coaches on lots of things as well but I get mountain bike coaches. I get dirt bike coaches. I get these different dance lesson coaches, by getting my brain used to learning and improving in any area, impacts my learning in all areas.

Micah Shilanski: Oh my gosh. And not even that, right, I’m sorry, I’m going off on a tangent on this one, but I get a look at other people’s businesses and how they operate. I get a teacher cherry pick from what it was a great idea. And then go incorporate it in my business. Or I get to say, oh my gosh, I am so glad I learned this horrible client experience in someone else’s business. I want to make sure it’s not happening in mine. Right. But it’s so great to be able to be in other people’s businesses in that capacity as a client and see how it works.

Matthew Jarvis: Yeah. So, this isn’t just a thought exercise. You really need to sit down and write these numbers. Micah and I have our respective spreadsheets that we track these on wherever you’re tracking yours, midyear. Again, look, what have I done so far this year? What am I on track for? What I already have scheduled for the second half of this year? What does it compare to last year? Am I gaining momentum? Am I losing momentum? As we like to say recently, coach Joe, that comfort is the cancer of success. It’s very easy to coast. And this Micah I think is where masterminds come back. Some of our best learning the last couple of years, the best things we’ve implemented, the most transformative changes have come from these masterminds, which are so critical to have.

Micah Shilanski: Amen. Speaking of something critical to have what this podcast is all about is DMV, delivering massive value. So, question out there, how much massive value did you deliver to your clients this year? Seeing them is not massive value, returning a phone call is not massive value, having the custodians send them a report on a monthly basis is not massive value. So, what have you done this year for massive value? Have an honest report with yourself and then say, “Great. How do I double it for the end of this year?

“How do I really improve that?” I mean, what would that be worth? If you could get one more referral because you added value to your clients, what is that worth? I mean, just not even the head trash stuff, which I think it would be worth because it really justifies what we do. But just the financial ramifications, the growth that you want to have, the goals that you achieve all by delivering this value to your clients.

Matthew Jarvis: Yeah. And Micah, I would also spin this the other way and maybe this is head trash or a negative way to look at it but are you delivering enough value? One of your clients becomes one of my prospects. They don’t immediately become one of my clients. Because let me tell you anytime Micah and I go head to head with another advisor, we win. Why? Because we deliver incredible amounts of value.

So, there used to be this time where you could say, “Hey, I’m the only guy in town. And so, nobody’s going to take my clients.” That’s not the case anymore, right? But half of Micah’s clients are outside of the state of Alaska. If you have a client who’s a federal employee and has federal employee benefits and you’re not delivering your A game, odds are they’re going to become on Micah his plate and you’re not going to win that battle unless you’re delivering massive value all the time.

Micah Shilanski: Yeah. And to add insult to injury, they’re going to pay what value is really worth when they work with me.

Matthew Jarvis: It’s right.

Micah Shilanski: And I’m not trying to rub anything in here but let’s have a very honest conversation about this. It’s about value that you’re delivering to your clients. Sten Morgan is a great one. Just to pull it out inside of us. We’ll say this very clearly, right? I’ll sit down with any of your clients. I’m going to show them so much value. They’re going to beg to become client. And he’s not saying it with pure arrogance, he can back it up with how he delivers value.

And this is the position that you need to be in. I’m okay if my clients go out and get a second opinion. I’ve talked about this on the podcast before. And sometimes it happens. And I’ve never lost a client knock on wood because of that. Because it’s, we deliver so much value. In fact, I enjoy it now because it highlights what we do. It’s so different, right? From the other advisors that are there.

Matthew Jarvis: Yeah. Micah, it’s funny, you mentioned I had a client the other day. They brought in from their property and casualty insurance agent, a “financial plan”. And they said, “Hey, Maya…” Yeah. Yeah. “This is pretty funny.” So, I don’t even name of the firm. Everybody would recognize it.

So, they bring us in this big binder. All this stuff and they said, “Matthew, our insurance agent gave this to us.” I said, “Really? What does it say?” And they said, “We have no idea. We were hoping you could…” I’m not making this up. “We have no idea what it says. We were hoping you could tell us.” And I said, “You know what? I’ll take a glance at it because I’m curious. I’m going to tell you it really says nothing. In fact, let’s just look how often your name is in here.

“Nowhere on the first page. This is all generic stuff to throw it away.” So, Micah, to your point, deliver massive value. Don’t just… We say this mantra a lot and I worry Micah would say it so much that just becomes this cliche, this “What are you doing the second half of the year? What are you doing with your July value add? What do you do with your October value add? What are you doing in January for your value add? How are you delivering value? What are you doing over the summer?” These are all opportunities to deliver massive value that will slip away if you don’t take them.

Micah Shilanski: No. If you were thinking in your mind, “Holy crap. I have no idea what I’m going to do,” then you need to right now pull over in a car, stop, get off your lawn mower, whatever you’re doing and you need to email shelby@theperfectria.com and tell her help. And say, “I don’t know what value I’m going to deliver.” And guess what? This is what the Perfect RIA is all about. I don’t know if she’s going to be able to get you into Invictus. We’re closing that one down because we got a lot of great members inside of it. But she’s going to be able to direct you in the right place. So, really, really important.

Matthew Jarvis: Yeah. Fun note on that Micah. We just prior to recording this podcast started putting dates on the calendar for our next mastermind for Invictus members this fall. I guess December still the fall-ish, winter. So, really excited for that. So, anybody who got in Invictus, you’re going to get invitations to that. If you’re not in Invictus, I don’t know what’s happening with you but if you’re not in, you need to make sure that between now and the end of the year, you have a mastermind scheduled. This Micah to your point earlier this year will slip by and you’ll keep dreaming about masterminds. I would say one of the action items. I don’t mean to skip ahead but you have to have a mastermind scheduled between now and the end of the year. You just have to, nonnegotiable.

Micah Shilanski: Okay? So, Jarvis, there could be a little bit of people too are avid listeners that says, “Man, Micah, you were just talking about taking four weeks off-

Matthew Jarvis: That’s right. Yeah.

Micah Shilanski: Straight.” You’ve just wrapped up a webinar, braiding us saying, “We don’t take enough time out of that.” Then you’re saying, “Holy crap, you’re not working,” right? These are the opposite things. So, how do we hold those two things in our hands at the same time? And I think that’s a really fair question that’s going in there. But bear with us just a minute. We’re not total hypocrites. You can do both things at the same time. This is Parkinson’s law, right? Just because we’re taking time off doesn’t mean we’re slacking.

This means great. We’re dedicating X amount of time to recharge, to be with our family, to vacation, to do these other things, then when we pivot back to work mode, we’re dedicating with more energy work mode. Now, I will do things in the summer different than spring and fall. Because guess what? In Alaska, it’s light 24/7. People don’t want to be in a room all day. We just spent nine months in darkness. Okay. It’s a little exaggeration, right? But when we spent nine months in darkness, they want to be outside doing things. They’re not going to go to an in-person seminar. We have not had success with that when we’ve tried. So, that’s not going to be my marketing efforts in the summertime. Does that mean Jarvis I stop marketing altogether?

Matthew Jarvis: No. Not a chance.

Micah Shilanski: No. There’s so many wonderful things that we can do. So, what are Jarvis just a couple of things that we can do on the marketing side in the summer if we have this head trash or we’re in a location? This is great. People really don’t want to come in right now. What do you do with that?

Matthew Jarvis: Yeah. I would say two things might get my bread and butter for new prospects. One is it’s a great chance to hit up my centers of influence. They too are having slow times, right? Their clients are out enjoying the summer. And so, that’s what I’m going to go back to all my accounts, my attorneys and say, “Great. Hey, let’s grab lunch. I want to ask you about this out of the other. I want to ask you about the beneficiary value add we’re doing in the fall. I want to ask you about these new tax law changes that I learned about from retirement tax services.”

Whatever it is, that’s why I’m going to reach out to my centers of influence. Number two, which works incredibly well in the summer, is my networking about one third of my new clients come from networking. That’s where I’m saying, “Perfect. What activities do I love to do in the summertime? And how do I do those activities with the people who could become ideal clients?” And we’ve talked a lot about this on the a hundred K challenge last year and on the webinars that are inside of Invictus.

Micah Shilanski: Another thing that I want to add to that when we just said value adds to clients, right? So, that’s another solid one that you can do that can easily generate clients. This is also a great thing to say, “Great. What’s going to tie me up in my fall surge that’s coming up? What are things that I need to get done in order to prep for that?” And that’s a great time to have your team working on this, whether that’s project work, whether we’re looking at saying, “Great. What’s going to tie me up in surge and how do I get ahead of those things?”

This is a phenomenal time to get those done. The other thing that we’re going to be hyper-focused on is dialing in our marketing plan because follows a phenomenal time for us to market but we also have surge doing them both at the same time it’s a pain in the butt. Well, guess what? I’m not going to have my surgery right now but I can get all my marketing set up and in place for fall, right? I can write all the content. We can come up with everything. We can get everything spooled up so that it’s on autopilot come fall time and now I’m doing search while marketing is happening. So, I can do those two things quit on the same time because I’m doing that prep work now.

Matthew Jarvis: Micah, other things that we do in the summer right now, my team is actually here in Alaska with you and your team, upgrading our CRM to the great things that are coming out of Invictus, right? Getting that training in the summer is a great time to do training. It’s a great time. If you’re looking at changing your portfolio models, great time to do that. Like you said, Micah, those are things that you cannot do during surge, not effectively. Use that summertime, right? We talked about taking four weeks off, summer’s 12 weeks long. There are still eight other incomplete weeks that you can do all sorts of amazing things in.

Micah Shilanski: Yeah. It’s great, right? So, there’s all of these things to be done. So, we can hold two things in our hands at the same time, two things can be true at the same time. And this is also the point where Parkinson’s law, things will take as long as you allow them to take. The question is, how do you use that to your advantage? One of the things we’d like to do with our team is say, “Great. Here’s the project schedule. You get things done.

“You get more time off because we don’t need to be in the office full-time if we’re not seeing clients but there’s still work to be done.” It’s amazing what the team will get done in a shortened period of time when you have a lovely carrot of a beautiful long weekend. All right? And they get to be out of the office. So, there’s great things you can do on the team perspective with Parkinson’s law as well.

Matthew Jarvis: Yeah. Quick logistics point on that Micah. We started years ago in our office. We just have a checklist for the week. And so, we said, “Great. On Friday, as soon as these things are all done for the week, you’re welcome to leave because I don’t ever work Fridays.” And so, great. When these things are done on Fridays, you’re welcome to leave whenever those get done.

And I got to be honest, I don’t actually know what time the team leaves on Friday because I’m not around but I get there on Monday and everything’s done. Right now, if I get there on Monday and things aren’t done, now, we’re going to have a little bit issue we need to resolve. Oh, that’s a discussion for a different day. So, there’s a lot of, Micah, to your point, Parkinson’s law’s the way that we can help force this issue in our favor.

Micah Shilanski: Thank you. Yeah. So, I want to pivot this back a little bit to goal setting. So, I’ve got a question for you. I didn’t set you with an advanced. What… I know. So, what happens if you set a goal at the end of last year and you’re not on track to achieve that goal today? Do you pivot and you reset that goal for the end of the year or do you keep with that same goal? So, let’s say I had a goal of 20 new households and I’ve brought on three, year to… I’m speaking for a friend right now. So, you’ve brought on three clients year to date. You’re behind the curve on this. I got to bring in 17 to hit my goal or do I readjust my goal?

Matthew Jarvis: I’m a double-down kind of guy but I’m also… Yeah. I’m a double down kind of guy like, “Hey, listen, I was slacking off.” And this was our discussion the year before last, “Hey, I’m behind on my numbers and I got to double down and make this thing happen.” The temptation Micah is as you know, to say, “Well, let me downgrade that now.” You’re welcome to pivot up. If you get halfway to the year, if you said that my goal was 20 for the year and I’m already at 20, perfect. Make it 40, make it 70. I don’t care. You’re welcome to pivot up. Don’t pivot down. Don’t rob yourself. You set this precedent in your mind of these are made up things. By the way, if you find yourself not being reliable for that, extreme accountability is the solution.

Micah Shilanski: Yeah. I’m so glad you said that. Because you’re just setting yourself up for failure. That’s all you’re doing, right? And you need to set yourself up for success. So, with success for me, if I have a goal of X dollars and I am $1 short of that goal, do I view that as a success or a fail?

Matthew Jarvis: I view it as a fail. I didn’t hit the goal. I was the first loser. I hit second place in that bad boy, right? So, my own head trash, I have to solve for. So, I give myself a range inside of my goals but I’m not going to pivot down. I’m not going to cheat myself out of the opportunity of success because we talked about Parkinson’s law, time doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter if you had six months or 12 months. You can get all of these things done within the end of the year.

Yeah. I love that. Essentially everyone listening, who at the end of the day, works for themselves. So, it’s different I think when you have a boss or a manager over the top of you, who’s saying, “Hey, listen, they’re setting your goal. If you don’t bring in 20 new clients, you’re out of here,” when it’s just you, you have to hold that same line. You can’t well at 20, 15, 12, 8, 7, 2, whatever, it doesn’t really matter. You’ve got to hold that line midyear is your chance to. And again, what’s the first rule of success. Do what you said you were going to do. If I told myself I’m going to bring in 20 clients, my goodness, I’ve got to do whatever I can to make that a reality.

Micah Shilanski: Absolutely. All right. So, super, super important. The other thing we chatted about real fast is this is a great thing to bring up with your team at this point too. What pain points do you have on your team’s side? We talked about pain points for you but also what pain points in your team. Do you need to invest in education, in training? As you said, Jarvis is with our team in Alaska, they’re training together. Do you have some phenomenal things pulling out of Invictus that’s coming out. So, those are great things. What ways do you need to invest? What changes do you need to make in your technology to really up the levels?

Matthew Jarvis: I love that. And like you said, it’s a great way to build your team and measure where’s their time being spent? How much time is being spent on busy work? How many interruptions are going on? How many hours are your team working? So, are they unbeknownst to you working way more than 40 hours, which we know delivers much lower results, right? How are you keeping a pulse on what your team’s doing? All of those things are critical.

Micah Shilanski: All right. So, let’s pivot into some action items, Jarvis, because the key to this is all about action items and about doing things. It’s not just a theoretical podcast. So, I’m going to say, the first thing that you need to do, if you haven’t done it already, set a date that you will complete this review offsite. This cannot be done at your house. This cannot be done at your office. I don’t care if it’s done at a Starbucks lobby, right? Did that for a long time because everything else was outside of my budget, so. But wherever you’re going to be, you need to set a third party location that you’re going to be and you’re going to complete this review and you can’t leave that location until the review is done.

Matthew Jarvis: Yeah. That’s a hundred percent in. And we talked earlier in this podcast, what those numbers are but just real quick, I’m going to look at gross income. I’m going to look at EBOC. I’m going to look at days out of the office. I’m going to look at new clients/new revenue brought on and I’m going to look at value delivered to clients both year to date and for the rest of the year. Micah, did I miss anything on that list?

Micah Shilanski: Personal development.

Matthew Jarvis: Personal development is involved.

Micah Shilanski: Critical, personal about it. All right. Action item. Number two. If you are a member of the backstage pass or our elite program, Invictus, you need to out to Shelby at the perfect RIA and get scheduled with her to complete your mountain map. This is really your roadmap, both for the remainder of this year, but also the next three years for doubling your success in each of the four core areas that we talked about on our recent webinar.

Matthew Jarvis: Now, if you’re looking at your goals and you had the mountain map was huge, right? When we rolled it out and even doing it personally, I carry it with me. I absolutely love that thing. But one of the things that we noticed too, is at least for me, when I’m setting my goals and I’m doing my midyear review… And this is what I need to watch out for Jarvis is when I’m looking at something and I haven’t made any progress towards that goal whatsoever, I’m avoiding that thing like the plague. Why? Right? If I have a goal that I said at the end of last year and I’m not doing anything toward it, that’s because I got a lot of head trash around it.

So, I need to fix that for me. That’s where this extreme accountability comes in, right? So, if you have a goal that you’re really not crushing, Jarvis, to your earlier point, this is the third action item, set extreme accountability. Not for all of your goals. That’s a design for failure. Pick one goal that you need to crush and put extreme accountability around that.

Micah Shilanski: Totally. Totally. That is really… I don’t want to say silver bullet because that word’s used incorrectly, I think. But that is if there was one thing other than surge meetings, one thing that will really make a difference in your practice, it is extreme accountability. Now, one other fun action item, Micah and I and the TPR ownership group with our families are going to be together in Northern Idaho in August.

And we’re going to have Micah, his wife, Kelly, and my wife, Jackie, do a podcast together that we’re not going to interfere with. So, if you have things that you would like to ask them on that podcast, email it to lifestyle@theperfectria, whatever you want to ask them about how this all works. Obviously we’re going to screen these for appropriateness. So, you jokers save those ones but we’re really excited for this. It’s going to be an awful lot of fun.

Matthew Jarvis: Yeah. That’d be a ton of fun. I can’t wait for that episode. Then we’ll probably air it live. That’d be fun with our live reactions to it. But anyways, that would be great. Again,

Micah Shilanski: Well, and as always, vote early vote often, go ahead and give the podcast five stars and be sure to check out our sister or brother podcast, I’m not sure which term we’re going to use there, the Retirement Tax Services with Steven Jarvis. He’s actually now a speaker at NAPFA and several other conferences that are coming up. So, if you’re looking to deliver massive value to your clients in the form of tax planning, retirement tax services, an incredible podcast.

Matthew Jarvis: Awesome. And until next time. Happy planning.

Micah Shilanski: Happy planning.

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