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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’m your cohost, Matthew Jarvis. And with me, as always, the man, the myth, the legend, Micah Shilanski. Micah, how are you, my friend?

Micah Shilanski: I am doing absolutely excellent. We are having a beautiful summer up here in Alaska, spending a lot of time in the RV, camping all over the place. And we recently wrapped up some time with some advisors, which is pretty amazing. And it really comes up to a lot of good thoughts on things that we need to make sure we’re improving in our practice consistently. So I am doing absolutely excellent, excited to jump into our topics today now.

Matthew Jarvis: Micah, I think the fact that you called it sometimes shows the difference of epic nous in our lives. So for those of you who were not there, we took a bush plane out to the middle of Western Alaska, which for Micah is like next door. But for the rest of us, the middle of nowhere, we did salmon fishing for a week. So some time was a pretty epic adventure for the rest of us.

But there were, there were a handful of other advisers there and one of the advisers brought up a concern that we hear from advisers again and again and again. And it was some variation of, hey, I don’t have enough bandwidth in my practice. Therefore, the solution is I need to hire more people. I need to hire another adviser and mike as I mentioned something we here pretty often.

Micah Shilanski: Yeah. And this is very well, could be the case, right. I mean you could be to a stage where you need to hire another advisor, but before we take on another six figure obligation that’s out there, regardless of you saying, well, I’m not going to pay him six figures. All right. Just go all in right. The all in cost of advisor, even if you’re paying 70 grand gets close to six figures a year. So just go with us and concept in that before I want to tackle a six figure expense.

Do you want to sit down and have a quick look at your current business and say, Hey, where other areas that I’m dramatically failing at that? If I clean these up, it would alleviate and I wouldn’t need that position or another way to phrase it: Do I just have such a crappy segment of my book, segment of my clients, segment of my life? That really sucks. I want to shove that off on somebody else. Okay, well if that’s what you want to do is that other person really going to be excited about working that aspect of it?

Matthew Jarvis: Yeah, that’s true. Whether you were thinking about hiring an advisor or in the support person. I remember earlier in my career circuit like 2007, 2008, we were doing about $300, revenue and there was five people on the payroll and they were all busy all the time. And we kept thinking, you know what we need is one more person now for those of you that are slow with math five into 300,000 plus expenses does not add up.

But everybody was busy and we kept thinking, hey, the solution to our problem is we need more people mike as you pointed out nine times out of 10, we need to start with the fundamentals. If your practice isn’t doing, you know, nearly a million dollars revenue or more really 23 people total including yourself is really almost practices need.

So if your sub-million dollars and you’re saying, hey, I need to start adding people, odds are, there’s some foundational issues that aren’t in place.

Micah Shilanski: Yeah. And a lot of those are going to go back to George Jumping. You’re correct me if I’m wrong, but these are going to be processes and standards. This is where 99% of the issues that we see is you’re, you don’t have or you’re not following consistently your own processes and standards in your office. This could be from scheduling. This could be from building this for me, from client segmentation. This could be from minimums, right. There’s so many different ways to do this.

This could be from time blocking to surge appointments to marketing calendar, right? You’re not following your own processes. And so you’re saying, well, great, the solution is going to bring, I’m going to bring someone else in who still isn’t going to follow these processes. It is now going to cost more. Take more of my time and you will not be further ahead. Now do not take us the wrong way. We’re all about hiring the correct people in delegation, right? We’ve got to balance these two things because we’re the first ones to tell you, you absolutely have to delegate certain things and you need the right team members to do that. But don’t get wrapped up and saying, well, if I just hire the next person is going to magically solve the problem because when you hire somebody, it takes a crap ton of work to get that person effective in your office. And a lot of times you got to make sure these things are done in place first. So when you bring that person on there ready to be effective.

Matthew Jarvis: So Micah, one of the first places we see this process breakdown. So when an advisor comes to us, this happens all the time. It happened last week. I think I need to hire somebody. Perfect. Let’s look at a couple of foundational issues. A couple of processes you point out and one of those that we always ask is what is your average revenue per client and how many of your clients are paying below your stated fee? Right. So if you say, hey, my feet is 1.5. Perfect. That’s great. How many of your clients are paying below that amount? And this is where mike. A lot of times advisors start to get a little sheepish, they either say no, no one or they’re like, well, you know, it’s just, it’s just a couple of people and their friends and they’re good people. And let’s not talk about that.

Micah Shilanski: What you can’t see is Jarvis is looking down with his eyes and shading away. Right? I mean that that physical expression right there. I mean that is 100% what happens? And that means it’s a lot more than you actually want to address.

Matthew Jarvis: Which means as a listener, if you’re thinking, hey, that’s not a problem. In my practice. It probably means that it’s a big problem in your practice. And really the only way that you’ll know and one of the first things I always do, we always do when we’re working with advisors one-on-one is a perfect print us a list of all your clients with the names removed with their average fee generated, quarterly, annual whatever in Smallest to largest. Right?

So when we look, and we say, Oh, you have 150 clients and 27 of our paying no fee or some nominal fee. Wait a second. Maybe we need to start there before we try to put a band aid on your practice by hiring another person,

Micah Shilanski: You know, and Jarvis, I was meeting with a really successful advisor, right? Seven figures doing a great job. And I looked at his building over the last 18 months and his building has dropped 20, his average building has dropped 20 bits in the last 18 months. And when you’re thinking about this, great, the last 18 months now, his dollar building has gone up.

So he’s been thinking on autopilot is saying, hey, everything’s been going well, We’ve been making money every quarter give or take right with the market drops, exceptions, right? But every quarter give or take, we’re making more and more money. But his average billing is dropping and he didn’t notice that now on $1 million 20 bits or $100 million 20 bits, that’s $200,000 a year. And so what I told him, I was like, look, this means you’ve been putting into exceptions. And he’s like, no, there’s no way I’ve done this. Great. Then why is your average billing dropped by 20 bits in 18 months?

The only way that’s happened is if you’re throwing in exceptions for some reason, and now he’s going back and look at it and he’s like, holy crap, you’re right. I thought these little one off to off things now all of a sudden are costing serious money.

Matthew Jarvis: Yeah. So let’s look at what one of these exceptions show up as they almost never show up. As in, Hey, I’m gonna make 27 exceptions. Right to this advisors point. He didn’t have a mark on the wall. Well I’ve got 27 exceptions and that’s what I’m doing.

It comes in the place of, hey, this person’s a friend. I don’t need to charge him. This person, we go to church together. I don’t need to charge him. This person has been a client a long time. I’m not going to raise their fees. This person has an account over here that I’m giving advice on, but I’m not going to include it. So these exceptions never show up in our mind as exceptions, they show up as, hey, I’m just doing the right thing.

Micah Shilanski: Exactly right. And then how do you balance it think of this before? But I had one adviser on Masterminds, we’re talking about something and it’s comment was like, well, it’s easier for you because you’re just mean. It was like, oh, somewhat hurtful but fine. And I was like, well tell me more about what you mean by mean. And we have a very clear delineation on who we on board as a client.

And he was feeling that if a client did not meet those standards and I didn’t take them on or I didn’t discount my feet in some way I was being mean about this and says no, no, no, no. I’m being very clear on who I deliver massive value to. Now, we get caught in this trap Jarvis, I think his advisors that says great, we have such a wide breadth of knowledge, we can literally help so many people. I mean very few people could come across us or most advisors on this podcast and we could not add some value to their life in their situation. But that’s not what we’re solving for. What we’re solving for is can I step in and deliver massive value to their situation and what I have a retiring federal employee, guess what? I can step in and deliver massive value because this is my niche. This is my specialty. This is where I can come in and really shine.

Again back to your point. If you need heart surgery, you need a heart surgeon, you don’t need a knee surgeon to do this. Right? So what is your niche that you’re going to deliver massive value end?

Matthew Jarvis: I think there’s, there’s probably two angles to attack this head trash from the one is if you’re making exceptions to your rules, right? You were working people for not charging your fee. One is who is paying for that right is who’s paying for you to offer free services to that person. Is it your other clients that are paying the fees? So are you having integrity? Are you a fiduciary? Right. I hate using that word to these other clients. You’re saying, hey, I’m going to charge you a premium fee, but I’m gonna work for this guy for free. Or is it your family that’s paying that fee? You’re saying, hey, you know, son, daughter, I’m not going to go to the park with you because I’m going to work for free over here.

And by the way, there’s, there’s nothing wrong with doing pro bono. In fact, it’s a wonderful thing to mike. And I both Micah and I do a lot of charity work. Make that an intentional thing. If you say, hey, listen, I want to help those who really need my help, right? Who are really in a bad spot, financially perfect. There are all sorts of great organizations that would love your help a couple of days a month, and that’s where you can direct all your pro bono work.

So when your friend from down the road says, hey, I really need some help with debt management and you think that’s not what I do professionally, but I’d love to help them perfect. You know, at once a month, I’m down at the library and I do free financial planning and you’re welcome to go down There is the third Thursday of each month.

So give that a place to live. But don’t kid yourself that making these exceptions is somehow a free a gimme for you.

Micah Shilanski: Yeah, absolutely. Giving it a place to live is key and service. For me, it was definitely the family time, right. When I was back to making exceptions, because my aspect of saying, well one client is paying more than the other client, guess what? Every client pays a different feet, It’s just schedule, but the dollar amounts are different. So for me that didn’t jive, but saying, hey, yeah, again, this is my head trash just coming out with it, right?

But if I had to look at my family and said, I’m sorry, I’m not going to spend time with you, I’m not going to give quality time to my family because I’m going to go work for free with somebody else that’s not paying a fee. And I haven’t put this pro bono in my mind, I’m still saying there are client, right, okay, now I have a problem, versus if I say I’m going to do this charity work, okay, great. I can do charity work all day long because again, that’s towards my core values and giving it that place to live is really, really important.

The other thing I’d love to throw on top of there is if you’re not following all of your processes, which includes billing, which includes scheduled time to meet with these clients, right? If you’re not following all of your processes, you’re not delivering massive value. And here’s what happens with these exception rules that are out there and you’re saying, oh well bob is different, so don’t put them in the normal meeting cycle, bob is different, is just as needed basis, right? Nelson, you’re not delivering massive value, but bob thinks he’s your full client.

So now what’s going to happen Bob is going to go out to Jarvis and say, man, this guy really doesn’t call me that much. It doesn’t mean I know we’re friends, but I wish there was a little bit more data because you’re not delivering your full value of service.

So, Jarvis, to your point, this is the great part about getting to different places to live. Hey, if you come under Smolenski and associates my ri a perfect. This is the system that we fit in. If not and I want to give out time. Perfect. I go to the FDA and they got some pro bono stuff and I can go do that over there under that umbrella. You really have to keep them separated.

Matthew Jarvis: Micah, I want to draw out again that point that you just said. If you have a and we see this again again and a client who’s an exception right? Not paying a full fees below your minimum, whatever the case would be. And you’re not giving that level of service. Like you said, you’re creating reputational damage for yourself. This big liability. People don’t, they don’t give this enough weight, right?

Every client you have on the books as a revolver and the gun of compliance. And no matter how compliant you are, somebody, you may draw the short straw right? Whether it’s something, they get a divorce, they have a family dispute, whatever is, this person is a liability on your books. And if you are kind of halfway doing it right, so you’ve been kind of giving them half service, you haven’t been seeing them as often, you haven’t been documented, you haven’t delivered massive value, and they die and their kids get angry and they decide to sue you. Well, you don’t have a lot of legs to stand on. Yeah, you’re saying, well, you know, they were small, but I—

Micah Shilanski: Well, you did it for free. They shouldn’t have to do anything.

Matthew Jarvis: Yeah, but your name was on the books and now the family is angry and now you’re in court and you don’t have a lot to stand up. So there’s a lot of angles wherever your head trash takes you, you need to look at that. Just say, I can’t make exceptions or mike usually let people have five exceptions. Right? Alright. Absolutely. You know, you have to have some great, you have five, but you have to be honest, I don’t have to say, oh, I think I have five. You need to say that the five are Dave, Sue, you know, whatever, and if I take on one more, one of those five have to be graduated.

Micah Shilanski: You know, Jarvis, this is one of things I’m going to walk away withis I am going to find a way in our CRM to mark my exception client because, again I have these two right?

Just do full confessions inside of here. But we limit them to five. Now I do five per 100 clients because in my mind I hate putting a hard, I hate forcing myself into a box and so now magically I can have unlimited exceptions. A limited clients. I know that’s not reality, but I’m calling for my head trash. So I do five per 100 clients and I’m going to take this as an action and for me to go back and mark those and say because I think I can only name two or three that I have exception. Well four or five seats already growing that I have exceptions on.

So I want to go back and pull that list and say, hey, am I really true to that or all of a sudden? Do I have these 20 exceptions? So that’s a big action. And for me out of this podcast.

Matthew Jarvis: I like that. This speaks to being intentional, right, to really look at these corners of your practices. This came up in a quasi mastermind, which is where the best stuff comes out of.

Now, some of you are listening, you’re saying yes, I have exceptions. I have people that aren’t paying my full fee who aren’t a good fit and then it’s followed by, you know what, I’ll take care of that when I’ll take care of that. When I have more clients, I’ll take care of that next year. I’ll take care of that when, when, when if should, should, should, should. Yeah, someday I’ll and now they will never come by the way unless you find a good master mind unless you find extreme accountability.

But if you if you have exceptions or really anything in your life and just saying I’ll take care of that when you’re probably not ever going to get there, that’s what’s holding you back. When I get to a million dollars in production, then I’ll do this when I get to two million. I get five million when I get to this age when I guess the next summer either do it now or just never talk about it again. I would say do it.

Micah Shilanski: Yeah, well I would say do it as well. The other thing that can go really wrong in this side of it is we can look at our practices and there’s so many good things about our practices, right? I mean we’re in an industry that we have a lot of time flexibility, a lot of income flexibility, which is absolutely phenomenal. And we can look at it and take someone is more successful than us. Then we can say, oh well I’m doing all the same things that they’re doing, and we’re not really peeling back behind the curtain and say, no, am I really doing all the same things like wrong person? Right.

I can look at it. You know what Ron personally meet with a handful of clients. I’m doing the same things. Really do. I have my own air group and 7/47 nope, not last time I checked. So apparently I’m doing something that he is doing something that I’m not doing. So when you’re looking at practices and you’re finding practices to benchmark against which I highly recommend this, right?

Find advisors and practices that you want to be like and say perfect. And maybe there’s a couple of them, Maybe they’re stair steps and say great, what are they doing? How do I get there and don’t cheapen that experience and saying, oh, I’m doing the same things. They’re just further ahead. You’re probably not. Otherwise you would be there.

Matthew Jarvis: Like I think this is really kind of a Jocko mindset, right? Extreme ownership. It’s easier to say victim. I’m doing all the same things in my mind. I’m doing all the same things as Ron Carson. His firm’s valued at a billion dollars, $1 billion value minds valued at a couple of million woe is me right? What was the same difference? The same thing? Right. But the extreme ownership is saying, okay, well what am I not doing? Right? What is it that I can change? What exceptions can I eliminate? Where can I up my game and then Micah, your point? Who can I model? Who has the game that I want and what are the things they’re doing that I’m not yet willing to do? And what is it, what do I need? What extreme accountability do I need to get myself there before we jump into that part?

Micah Shilanski: I mean just think about the liberty fact of this right of taking it. The empowering fact that’s going to be there saying great when I have that honest exercise, now I get a directly, see what do I need to improve. You know, I find that I’m doing a lot of action shooting, which has been a lot of fun for our family and when we’re tracking our growth, this is exactly what we do. We pick a few shooters that’s a great. Who do we want to be like and what are they doing? And we can dial down their metrics really, really clear between time and accuracy etcetera. And you know exactly what to improve upon.

Do the same thing right here. Find those practices, dial them in and have that honest discussion. And guess what if we can do it if other advisors can do it. So can you just have the honest conversation and know your numbers. This is the key part before we get to this. Extreme accountability is when we’re talking advisor sometimes here we have one or two advise one or two exceptions blah blah blah. Then also you turn around and have 30 exceptions, it’s like one third of their clients are exceptions to the rule.

Okay, that’s an entire practice. That’s not an exception. Just to be clear. So where is that set up? And now, Jarvis, kicking back to you to your point. Now, once we’ve identified those now, we need the extreme accountability. Matthew Jarvis: That’s right. Because the fourth rule of success is that willpower is not enough. If it were easy to get rid of the exceptions, we wouldn’t need to have a podcast on exceptions, right. If it was easy to delegate your email, we wouldn’t need to talk about that. It’s the hard things that differentiate the top advisers from everybody else.

And Micah, it’s no joke, graduating clients is not an easy thing to do. There was a lot of head trash. I’ve yet to meet an advisor who doesn’t have any head trash around graduating clients about getting rid of exceptions. It’s really tough to deal with.

Micah Shilanski: It is because all the same issues you deal with, we deal, by the way, right? I’ve worked with them for 10 years. They’re great people. I’m supposed to fire them just because they don’t have enough money. Right? I mean, all of those things you definitely come out. But the question is, where are you adding the most value?

And we’re not saying cinema letter and tell them to go down the road. Give them options, right? Give them things are saying, hey, good news. We have this other advisor that’s specializing just in years and I’ve realized that I cannot provide the best level of service that he can because he fits your specialty a little bit more than I do. That’s not a bad thing. That’s a really good thing to do for the client.

Now, if you’re sitting there thinking no one gives the same level of service to my clients that I do. Okay. You’re just lying to yourself and you’re going to lie to yourself about other things as well. Right. Because we all say that. So find those other advisors that specialize in that segment that you have and bring them on board. Not as as an employee of the firm. Right? But bring them in a partnership and kick off those clients over to them so you can focus on your niche.

Matthew Jarvis: Yeah, I really like that. And and we’ve talked before about how to graduate clients and and there’s a lot of different approaches, but let’s focus if if we can just a little bit on how do we get over this head trash or how do we kind of if you will force ourselves into it?

Some of the advisers we worked with in the past and with each other, Micah, it’s really been this extreme accountability and my willpower. If I’m being honest by willpower is not enough to graduate these clients. What extreme accountability do we need to put in place? We worked just a few weeks ago with an advisor. We say Grace, some great news. Here’s your steam account. Every time you take on an exception, someone below your new fee schedule, just graduate one of your top clients. It’s really that easy. Here’s the letter. You can give them our name. It’s not a problem. But every time you take on a client below your new fee schedule, just graduate one of your top clients.

In fact that one of your top client, right? So we need something—

Micah Shilanski: Just number one.

Matthew Jarvis: That’s what resonated with him. Another adviser. We did extreme accountability with his was he wanted to see clients on Tuesdays and Thursdays because an exception can also be people who want to meet with you outside of surge, right? It’s not just about fees and they say I can only see you on Monday night, that’s my family time. Perfect. You know, that’s so his was anytime he met with a client outside of his Tuesday and Thursday meeting schedule that night, instead of going to his normal gym, he had to go down to the ladies gym below his office in a tutu and work out there and he was a big working out kind of guy. And so that was the extreme accountability he needed.

Micah Shilanski. Right, so this is what’s the hack that you need to get you motivated to do. This is the really big thing. Now with this, I would also say we talked about before in another podcast is one of things that I like to do probably twice a year is I break down all of my list of clients by fees and I segment amount of saying, great, what’s the revenue that’s being paid? Because before you can identify your exceptions, you have to, in writing identify your rules, right?

Otherwise, you don’t know your exceptions are. So what are your rules? What your asset minimum? What your fee minimum? What your schedule minimum do you require? All the assets are not all of the assets? Right. What are your rules that you have outlined? Then you can go to your book and say great. Who’s not following these rules?

If you do it the other way around also and you’ll change all of your rules when you’re going through it. So without looking at clients, what are your rules of your ideal clients who you deal with? Perfect. Take that. Then go look at your client list and find out who your exceptions are.

Matthew Jarvis: These rules mike are so important to have in writing, especially when you’re prospecting. Because we get in this prospect mode where the thrill of the hunt and it’s really easy to get excited and make exceptions. Oh, there not quite in my niche. What their clothes, they can’t move all their assets, but they’re close. They’re kind of complaining about my feet, but they’re close.

And it’s really easy when you’re in the thrill of the hunt to make those exceptions, right? Because the last thing you want to take on more exceptions. But we just talked about dealing with the current exceptions. You don’t want to take on more. You need to have in writing in your prospect process, Micah, those rules that you talked about right? They have to bring in all their assets. They have to be willing to pay the fee. They have to go through our prospect process as outlined, they have to agree to meet during search means whatever your four or five really key rules are you’ve got to check those boxes each time or you’ll end up with even more exceptions because—I think that’s what happens, right?

You might say I have five exceptions or seven or 10 and but it doesn’t ever stop there. Once you start making exceptions, it tends to just keep going until Mike. As you point out earlier, a third to half the majority of your book are exceptions to the rule because you have no rule. That’s just kind of a accidental mess.

Micah Shilanski: And this is something I communicate with clients and prospects. Actually let’s take the fee side of it because we charge a premium because we have premium advice and clients are, by the way delighted to pay that. But it’s always a question that’s going to come up. And one of the things I say, hey, this is your money. I want to make sure you feel very comfortable with every where your money is going, which includes our fee. And I’m willing to have the fee conversation two times. And so you know what? If you bring up the fee more than two times, that means you’re not seeing the value in it and this isn’t an ideal fit, which is 100% okay because Jarvis, what I was running into is I had that one or two clients that were out there that I’d meet with, that every single time would bring up the feet and you know what?

It just weighed on me and I dreaded their appointments. And one of my rules is I can’t read a client appointment if I dread a client appointment. They are not an ideal fit. But I had to refine that a little bit more. So now I tell clients say delighted to china about this. We can have two ft conversations after that. You don’t see the value which is 100% fine. And I’m delighted to move this on to the next. Now if you just say what is the fee or I need it for you know accounting or blah blah blah, that’s not an issue. Right? And when I explain that to clients, oh my gosh, it’s so relieving when I explain those rules to the clients or even how I book appointments and when they can come in and see me. I just tell the prospects hey this is how it works And it’s so freeing because they’re like great. They’re self selecting, this is an ideal fit for them. And if it’s not and we had one client prospect that wanted to hire us, but they wanted to meet every other week, that’s not how we do business. And she went somewhere else.

I thought that was absolutely phenomenal because it would have been a disaster in that relationship if we had scheduled our meetings months out and she was expecting to meet every other week with the financial advisor. So explaining these rules to your clients and prospects is phenomenal.

Matthew Jarvis: Micah, you mentioned the prospect that wanted to meet with you every other week. And this brings up in my mind another set of exceptions and advisers book that most advisors, nearly all of them are unaware of and that is the clients that are taking up a ton of your team’s time. So this adviser we spoke with today said boy, what I need is another person on my team so I have more bandwidth.

Wait a second. Your client book isn’t big enough. You shouldn’t need this much bandwidth. And that’s where you take that client list. We talked about doing the client list. No names just revenue now. You need to take a client list. No revenue. Just names handed to your team and say, hey, who are the two or three or four people here that take the most amount of your time? And who are the two or three or four people here that you, just to be honest, don’t really enjoy hearing from full immunity? Right? Full immunity but just go ahead and mark those and those are also clients. You need to take a real hard look and say these are exceptions. If they’re not respecting our team. If they’re not playing by the rules, these are probably people who need to go as well because you’ll be shocked. There will be a client probably on your books that is calling your team every few days with every little question, they’re burning up immense amounts of team time, especially relative to feel their pain.

Micah Shilanski: I was gonna say, it’s not your top clients by the way.

Matthew Jarvis: Yeah. In fact, there’s kind of this inverse relationship, right? The smaller the client, the more service they need, oddly enough.

Micah Shilanski: Absolutely. And again, what’s your model? And if that fits your model, then that’s what you’re designing for outstanding. But the problem is nine times out of 10,000. And this goes back to Jarvis our podcast all about action items. Let’s make a good little transition there to action items.

Number one, you need to write down what that ideal client experience is going to be like. Right, So what are the fees, what are your minimums? What is your scheduling? What is the personality? What is that niche? That’s going to be there. Because we don’t have this in writing. What we said earlier. You don’t know what your exceptions are. So step one is in writing and this should fit on a post it sized card. I’m not looking for a dissertation or quote financial plan that 7000 pages long on a post it note. This should fit and not. By the way our hack, which is the giant posted notes that sit on the walls that we put up for masterminds. They’re really small ones. What is that ideal client?

Matthew Jarvis: I really like that. I like to have not to get a side tangent. I like to have a hard and a soft number on the, especially for minimum.

So sometimes I say, hey listen, my target is $10,000 in revenue. My hard minimum, $7,500. Right? So it’s just a small little hack there. So whatever your list of rules that might have just outlined, pick at least one for this quarter. And anybody who doesn’t meet that rule needs to be graduated or or at least given the opportunity to meet that rule, right? You go back and say, hey, listen, the new face schedules X or the new service model is why, but tackle one every quarter and tell your book is down to, and Micah will use your real no more than five exceptions per 100 households.

Micah Shilanski: And if you are a backstage pass and Invictus member, then absolutely. Inside of the platform, you have the exact letters that Jarvis sends out. You have our fee, graduation conversation or fee increased conversation. Use that. Do what works. Rule number three of success: Do what works. If you’re not a member of Invictus and Backstage Pass, boy, I don’t know what’s holding you back from success, but that’s on you.

Jarvis. I’m going to see the second action item that’s going to be here is number one, you have now created your list of what your ideal client is. Now you need to go back to your client list and flag every single one that doesn’t meet that rule or better yet, have your team go back and flag every single one that doesn’t meet that rule.

Matthew Jarvis: Now action item number three, once you have that list and you know, you’re really clear on what needs to happen. This is where you need to find extreme accountability ideally through a mastermind where you have piers, where you can hold each other accountable, where you can say Jarvis, guess what you’ve said, You’ve got these 25 exceptions, 20 of them need to be graduated by the end of the year and let’s work together. I want accountability, you need.

So maybe it’s, I give you Mike and I have done this before. Let me give you 20 letters to my 20 best clients and at the end of the year, I’ll let you know how many of the exceptions I graduated and that’s how many letters you mailed to these clients telling them that I don’t want to be there advisor anymore.

And so there’s ways to make this happen, right? Willpower is not enough, but there’s always an extreme accountability that is motivating enough.

Micah Shilanski: And always focus on the greater thing that you’re accomplishing, right? You’re really pushing yourself. Yeah. What’s your why? Behind this? And for me was a lot of family time, right? Hitting family goals, spending that time and being that quality advisor to the clients. I can help the most. Not everyone in the world.

Matthew Jarvis: Yeah, that’s something we do a lot during the mastermind, Micah, when we identify a kind of these should areas where willpower is enough, we stop and say, right, what would your life be like if you got rid of these exceptions for today’s podcast or whatever it is?

The thing, what difference would that make in your life? To your family, To your practice your their clients, to your quality of life, to your health, your income? What difference would it make? Find that why? That motivates the extreme accountability.

Micah Shilanski: Awesome. So share this with other advisers because you’re helping us growth in nation, which is absolutely amazing and we’re making an impactful difference. And the only way we’re doing that is because of you, not just because of you sharing this, but because the feedback we get from you, which is great.

This is your first time hitting this episode. Makes your email first time at theperfectria.com. We have a whole segment of things that you need to know, kind of some foundational stuff to make your practice a rockstar practice. And until next time. Happy planning.

Matthew Jarvis: Happy planning.

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