What You'll Learn In Today's Episode:

  • Set clear expectations and boundaries with clients from the beginning of the relationship.
  • Use surge periods to focus on client interactions and deliver massive value.
  • Build a solid foundation with clients by addressing estate planning, cash flow management, and insurance.
  • Maintain ongoing communication with clients and involve your team in the process.
  • Reinforce the metaphor of building a financial house throughout the client relationship.

In this Encore episode of Worlds to Conquer, Jamie Shilanski unveils the game-changing strategies that will revolutionize how you set expectations and deliver massive value during the critical client onboarding phase. She shared her firm’s dynamic approach to crafting unforgettable first impressions that lay the foundation for long-lasting, trust-based relationships.

Jamie’s blueprint covers all bases, from estate planning and cash flow management to insurance – a comprehensive roadmap for building an unshakable financial house that withstands any storm. With candid insights and actionable tips, this episode is a masterclass in setting boundaries, managing expectations, and delivering value that resonates deeply with clients. Jamie’s wisdom will improve your onboarding process whether you’re a seasoned pro or just starting. Listen in to gain a competitive edge and craft onboarding experiences that leave a lasting impression!

Read the Transcript Below

Amber  

Hi TPR Nation Amber here from your Follow up Fridays. Today we’re excited to share an encore episode of Worlds to Conquer as Jamie talks through creating the foundation with the client onboarding process once a prospect says yes, and if you’re looking for training on getting those prospects, be sure to email us that lifestyle@theperfectria.com so you don’t miss out on our upcoming masterclass release.

 

Jamie  

Welcome back TPR Nation this is Jamie Shilanski in an episode of Worlds to Conquer where we are still unpacking the onboarding process. But once we get hired by a client, so we get a lot of questions with this whenever we meet with financial advisors at industry conferences or if they jump on one of our threadable quarterly power sessions. They have follow up questions about like Okay, great. Now I’ve implemented surge, but what do I do during that first year? I’ve gotten hired by a client in order to deliver massive value to them and reinforce that relationship. And I mentioned surge because surge is really important understand exactly how it works in our offices. So I’m going to be speaking about Shilanski and Associates, we run an enterprise office. There are 14 of us, I believe on staff, of which five of us are financial advisors. We work with clients across the United States, around 46% of our clientele, works in the lower 48 and of course our office our RIA is based out of Anchorage, Alaska. We’ve been in business since 1981, when our father Floyd Shilanski and mom Rosa Shilanski, started the financial planning practice up here in this very remote part of the world. And during that time began with Floyd and Rosa seeing clients pretty much any time the client was willing and able to meet with them. It didn’t matter if it was seven o’clock on a Tuesday night after hockey practice or early Saturday. Morning at the remote cabin where the client lived. They were just eager to get business started. And of course in those early stages, anyone that says yes to you feels like your ideal client. But over the years, we began to refine our processes over and over and over again. Because what we found because of our mom Rosa Shilanski reiterating to our dad Floyd was that the clients that asked you for exemptions asked you to come to their house late at night asked you to come to their place of residence on the weekend because they simply couldn’t make time to meet with you during the day. We’re not ideal clients. Those were people that were always going to be looking for and asking you for exceptions. Those were people that wanted you to cater around their lifestyle but had no consideration for your own. So took several years and my father went to several coaching programs and learned about strategic days buffer days and how to make those work in our practice. Now as he began to refine what worked best for him, he found that during longer periods of time where he was incredibly focused, served him better than having maybe one day on one day off and then a buffer day. So as he began to sculpt and work with this, my brother Micah Shilanski came into the practice his daughter [Aviana] had some severe medical challenges and we were forced to make a very dramatic change on how our practice worked with clients. And that implemented what we now refer to in the industry as surge with there’s specific time block periods of time in which you are deeply focused on interacting with clients. And making sure that you’re working with them one on one, but outside of surge and at Shilanski and Associates we have three surges a year. So we have our spring surge that happens from mid March to mid April. We have our summer surges which are kind of sprinkled in on different days, generally the first week of the month. And then we also have our fall surge and our fall surge happens about mid October to right before Thanksgiving time. Now those are deliberate and specific choices on the calendar in which we have chosen those dates and times to meet with clients. If you’re looking or thinking about implementing surge or refining surge in your office because you already started a rip off our date, use our calendar. It works really really well specifically for a reason that we’ve talked a lot about on this podcast. So again, don’t try to reinvent the wheel work with these dates. They have been refined over decades of times to make sure that they’re bringing the most value to clients and the most effectiveness for you running your RIA, your financial advisory practice. So now that we know what our surge dates are begs the question, what do you do with new clients? We’ve been talking about that all day one about how do we deliver massive value when we onboard a new client? A lot of times people think that prospecting is the hardest task. You know, the funnest part of financial planning is meeting with a prospect for the very first time diving into the information blowing their mind with tremendous value. But that second appointment… that second appointment is when you better hit a home run. You can’t be on the game. Now that you’ve been hired. What are you going to do for the rest of the year that will deliver massive value. And I find that those second third appointments are pretty easy, right? Because you’re still doing a lot of work and you’re doing all of that fun stuff of consolidating all of their information, getting everything together, like developing the financial plan, but then you’ve got to be able to put yourself in position for ongoing continuing value. So what happens when we get hired by a client at the beginning of surge, perhaps and then it could be two or three months before they’re available to meet with our office again, how do we set those expectations with the client? And how do we make sure that we’re continuing to deliver massive value? So as you recall for Shilanski and Associates, we focus a lot on federal employees. So we run planning a federal retirement, which my brother Micah is the face off and I’m the author behind the articles and we spend a lot of time and energy marketing financial advisory services to federal employees. So when a federal employee contact Shilanski and Associates in order to book their appointment with one of our federal employee benefits experts remember we have five financial advisors in our office, but we all operate the exact same surge schedule. We set out our surge a little over a year in advance this is not open for decision making by an entire committee. Instead it’s established by our leadership team and those are the dates that we all rolled with generally without exception. So right from the beginning, federal employees are going to know that it could take several weeks if not months to get into our office. We have set a standard that says hey, you know just because you call and you want to work with us and you want to retire next month, we either have an opening or we do not we generally do not make emergency appointments. Are there are some exceptions? Of course there are exceptions but if we’re going to break our processes, it has to be a really good reason why. Here’s a great reason why you’ve got a long term client and their brother or sister has a spouse that passes away and my goodness, the whole world is crashing down and they need to meet with a financial advisor right away. And those would be emergency situations. But again, look at the history of you’re working with people you don’t have that many emergencies. You might have some man made emergencies, but you don’t have real emergencies happening so often that you don’t know how to accommodate or make time for so we try to be really disciplined in our process and our prospects now that when they want to come and meet with us, it’s already been several weeks or months before they’re able to make an appointment with one of our financial advisors. So we set that expectation right from the get go. When we set up our surge schedule, one of the things that a lot of rookies implementing search make a mistake of is they forget to give themselves a buffer days so a buffer day is one to two days at the end of service in which you’ve allowed yourself additional time to me to with appointments. And the reason that we have these buffer days is because some times when we meet with financial planning clients during surge, something might be going on dramatic in their life that we need a second appointment with them during that specific time period. Or if we’re onboarding prospect. We may at the beginning of search and meet with a prospect and they decide to hire us we decide they’re a good fit for our firm. Remember because this is a mutual relationship. It has to feel good both ways. Just because a person can fog a mirror does not make them an ideal client. Listen to your gut, listen to your instincts. I cannot drag this home enough. I’ve never once graduated or fired a client or I didn’t look back and have red flags that they should have never been a client from the get go. So they’ve agreed to hire us and now they want that second appointment. We’ve got a little bit of buffer time to have a second consultation during a surge if we need to. And if we don’t need to. We outline all of the homework that we want to get done in between now and our next meeting, as well as what we haven’t anticipated the client getting done between now and our next meeting. Just like our podcast where we practice for the action items for you to do. That’s what our meetings with clients are like also, in fact when I’m coming to the conclusion of a meeting with a client, I will say great just before we leave one another I want to make sure I go through our list. Here’s what I’m going to do between now and the next time that we meet. And then here’s the action items that I have for you to do. And just because I’m really deadline driven I believe in Parkinson’s Law that the work will take up the time in which you allow for it to do that. Let’s make sure we’ve touched on really good deadlines on this. When do you think Mr. Mrs. Client you can have X done by – great would it be appropriate for me to have one of our relationship managers reach out to you if we get close to that deadline and it’s not done. Now I really liked doing this with clients. I like setting deadlines and targets and getting certain things accomplished. And one of the driving reasons is because we do what we say we’re going to do. And financial planning is a verb it is an ongoing experience. And that means that we want to get certain things tackled and done on time. Now when we bring on a new prospect and they hire us for financial planning, we’re not going to we’re robbing them with action items that they need to complete. Instead, I want small digestible milestones that they can realistically achieve in the time that we have allotted. Now, if you think I talk fast, I probably even think faster and so oftentimes, like deadlines are a lot shorter than what people have a tolerance or god forbid other things in their lives going on to be able to accomplish. So I want to make sure that whenever I give a deadline, I know one hack that I will mentally do is that I will ask the client listen, I think this should take about five days but I understand that you have more things going on in your life, Mr. Mrs. Client than what I have on my agenda here today. Shall we allow two weeks for this? And then I’ll get there acquiesce to that yes or no? And then we’ll go from there after that two weeks if I have not heard from them. If the client hasn’t got that task done. I’m gonna have my relationship managers or my operations team reach out to them. A difference between when I have a relationship manager when I have an ops team reach out depends on what I need or want the client to do isn’t involving the movement of money. Then I’m going to have my ops team that is sole focus is the movement and management of money. Anything else pretty much goes in the RM category. If I need them to get me a copy of their declaration pages for insurance they needed to get me their employee benefit information, their asset allocation forms for their companies and employer plan. If anything like that, I’m going to pass that over to an RM. Now remember that the relationship manager and operation personnel in our office can not give financial planning advice, right that’s a deal breaker regardless of their license. If they’re not a financial advisor. They cannot give financial planning advice at our firm. However, they don’t have to give advice to help a client figure out where to get a different forms from their employer. They don’t have to be licensed to follow up on pay stubs and leading earning statements and make those courtesy phone calls for clients or work with their centers of influence. Right? Follow up on taxes, follow up on the estate planning documents, make sure we have deeds of trust on file, all of that information that goes into me building the financial plan. And if you’re anything like me, the second that you get hired from a client and you start going through and putting your arms wrapped around all this financial information. You’re so excited to get started on all the planning. And you’re thinking to yourself, oh my goodness, I need to get all of this done. This is what I’ve got to build out. This is the scope of what it looks like. But when your client leaves your office, while these things are really important and vital for them to get done. It’s not the only thing going on in their lives, right? They have other things that are a priority, too. So making sure that you’re giving them small, digestible tasks to achieve. One of the ways that we set this expectation in our office and I’ve got a great visual of it if you want to jump over to shilanski.com. That’s Shilanski.com and you will see that I have a little animated roadmap of where we’re going when we build financial plans with clients. And the way that we verbalize this with clients is we say Mr. Mrs. Client, when we build your financial plan, it’s going to be often like building your financial house. So if you walk me through this, what’s the most important thing for you  to make sure that you have started your new home on when you start to build it? And of course, Mr. Mrs. Client will say well, it’s gotta have a good foundation. And we will agree we’ll say yes, good houses, start with good foundations, just like in financial planning. And so the most important part of your financial plan for us to get done right away is going to be your estate planning. Because without it, none of what we build together matters. Would we agree with that? Yes, absolutely. Great. I also like to tackle estate planning first, because it is the one you’re gonna want to pull it off the most can we both agree on that? And they’ll get a little chuckle because oftentimes two people in a relationship and a household raising families having diversity from their different backgrounds do not have coinciding views on what should happen with their estate if one of them predeceases the other or if they were both a parish. So I would say you know what, this is a terrible topic for us to have to discuss. Let’s get it done first, so that we know it’s checkmark. And then here’s where we’re going to go every year after that every couple of years. We’re just going to kind of do a cursory review, make sure it’s still intact and is as you want it to be. Does that sound like a good commitment? Yes, absolutely. Great. Well, then during our next meeting, we’re going to be discussing your estate planning. There are four areas of estate planning that are really vital to me, three of them I know without a doubt you need the fourth one you might not need but I want to explore together with you and make sure that we have everything in our financial plan built around your desires and wishes today as they are. Sounds great to me. Fantastic. And we’re going to coordinate that with an attorney. If you don’t currently work with one, I’ll make a recommendation. I’ll go above making recommendation. Why don’t we have that first consultation here in our office where we’re all comfortable? And I can preface them with some things that on the tax planning side of the scenario they need to know about? And then we can just have an introduction together. Oh, genius, great! Thank you so much. Wonderful. Boom, I set my dissertation for that first estate planning meeting. Now during that time period between there and estate planning, I’m also going to hit their cash flow. Right, cash is king regardless of where you’re at in your career, or how close you are to retirement or if you’re in retirement. Cash is king. So if you remember from the conversations that I’ve had with you, I never use the word budget, or as Matthew Jarvis likes to say boo-jey instead I use a spending plan. What are our goals? What are our objectives? Money is intentional, and I want you to be intentional about what you’re earning and what you’re spending. And I want to give your money some purpose. So if there are things that you love to do, I want to incorporate them now today in your financial plan. Mr. Mrs. Client, I have grown up in a financial planning industry and it breaks my heart to know that some people scrimp and save their entire working lives. And then two weeks after they retire, and I don’t want that for you. I don’t want all of your happiness to be postponed until you’re into the Go Go years of your retirement. So I would love to design a financial plan that is really suitable for your lifestyle. And Mr. Mrs. Client, you might not meet anything like me but if you are I sometimes think of money like food, and I can be working out and I can be feeling really really good hitting the gym all the time not having any fried foods or sugar limits on my carbs. And I’m feeling so healthy and so good that 30 days into this I get invited to a party and somebody says, Oh, come on, live a little have a little pizza, have a little beer, and then a little pizza turns into a lot of pizza and a lot of beer if you’re Jamie Shilanski. So then the next day do I want to get up and go to the gym? No! Because I am hung over from pizza and beer and now I feel lousy about myself. And so then it may take a little bit of time to reinitiate those habits about being disciplined about money and I think money is a lot like food in that way. That sometimes we scrimp and we save and we’re doing so good. That all sudden we want to reward ourselves and we’re like yes, absolutely. So it is imperative to me that as we build out your financial plan, we’re being intentional and we’re creating a spending plan that is designed so beautifully, that you are so happy later in life to look back on it because you knew you are intentional. You are purposeful. You took care of the things that you needed to but you also lived your life. And generally we’ll come up with a great spending plan. I’m a great fan of buckets, not our investment buckets, but our cash flow buckets. And we’ll talk a little bit about that later in future episodes. But those cash flow buckets are phenomenal. They’re so powerful. I’ve implemented one where a client has come back to me and said this is the worst idea ever. This is like one of those low IQ huge impact ideas that clients come back and say wow, I wish I would have started all my life doing this. Thank you

so much and they go tell their friends about it. In fact, I’ve been hired because I’ve dealt with some medical professionals that came in my office and said hey, listen, you’ve got so and so set up like this and you set up like that how to. So really, really powerful stuff. So as we discuss all about cash flow that’s going to happen in between kind of our first and second meeting. And cash flow is gonna be one of those conversations that we’re always talking about right? This is like going going to the doctor and they get the vitals, we’re always going to be talking about cash flow in every single meeting. Because cash flow is king and we’ve got to know what those ebbs and flows are for clients. Alright, then we’re going to talk about retirement income, what do we need to do insurance right? And I explained to the client that now we’re going to frame the house we got to frame everything and the fun part is doing the dressing and doing the design and the pictures and making sure that we bring in furniture but first we got to have a solid foundation. Then we got to frame the house. Then we’ll bring in the flooring and make sure we get everything intact. So as we set the tone for that we’re going to talk to them about different things in the meetings that we need to achieve over the next couple of years. And will those are goals and tax planning on who the client is and what they need. Maybe that’s some small business planning as well. Small and business can mean a mom and pop shop a hobby that becomes something profitable and it also can mean real estate income and how we’re going to make sure that we’re diversifying different income sources for passive income later in their life. So we’ll do all of these in several different appointments. And we’re setting that tone about that financial house and building it every single appointment that we made for the first couple of years. I’m going to reinforce that metaphor, right, Mr. Mrs. Client, as you know, we said we would build your financial house here’s what we’ve accomplished. We set out a really great foundation. We got XY and Z done and we did it on time. Oh man, that’s great. Jamie. I’ve been we’ve been thinking about doing that for years. It’s been on our mental to do list. We’ve just never gotten it done. I’m so happy that’s done and out of the way now. Great. Now we built out your spending plans. Here’s what we’re doing to live intentionally and creating these different cash flow buckets. Oh, this is phenomenal. Yep, we’re able to do this and now we’re not panicked about where money’s gonna come from. If we have an emergency if we want to go on vacation etc. And they we start talking about the insurance, okay, great! You know insurence is something that we’ll do a post point. But once you’re kind of it’s kind of a one and done right? Like you’re building your insurance policy. A lot of times as life insurance has helped, sometimes it’s health sometimes it’s disability and other risk management areas. But a lot of times on life insurance we’re just making sure we have it in place and then we’re doing all sorts of low routine maintenance on it. But that’s still conversation point just because we sold one insurance policy one year, we’re not going to wait to talk to it 15 years later because we sold them a 20 year term. That’s something that we’re going to constantly bring on our value adds around and make sure they’ve got other things check marked. We do not do property and casualty insurance inside of our office and we don’t really have a great relationship with somebody that does property and casualty rather than that the leases are on the client. And then we want to see those declaration pages because we just want to mentally check the mark it and make sure that we have it inside of that financial planning house. So as you can see, we’re doing a lot of work in between these appointments. But not a lot of that work necessary is going to mean that I’m talking to the client during each one of those stages. In fact, I’m gonna rely heavily on my team to make several points of contact. Now when we first implemented surge in this super hyper disciplined way, first couple of years, you know, as financial advisors got a little bit of tremors were like oh my gosh, we have not talked to that client next amount of days are probably going to lose clients, you know, and it always leads back to What’s the joke? Yep, you got it. We’re gonna lose our clients be broke and living in a van down by the river. And so it really made me stop one day and say, okay, hold on a second. I’ve got a lot of head trash about me not communicating or talking as much to clients as I had years before. I’m gonna pull up our infinity CRM, and I’m gonna see on my widget dashboard. So when I log into my CRM, it is exactly all the different polls points that I want. So I tracked new clients, I tracked the lost clients and lost in our office means either we graduated they’ve gone on to do something else or they’ve passed away. Then we of course have our AUM pulse points we have the number of clients, and then I also track how many incoming phone calls that we have. So we use Ring Cetral because we have multiple people living in different states from work from home positions, and then during surge we all travel back to Alaska, and we were all in person, at least for the first couple of weeks for our remote team here. So when I get that kind of head trash in my brain and thinking that we haven’t heard from clients and that nobody’s calling our office anymore, I simply log into my system and I see in Infinity that Mr. Mrs. Client go into their client record I see all in the notes. Our CRM is the brain trust of our practice. All employees use the CRM and if we have any interaction whatsoever with a client, it goes inside of Infinity. If we send them an email, if we log a phone call, if we have missed a phone call from a client

everything goes inside Infinity, including all of our value ads. And this has been super powerful, because we’ll have clients call back after let’s just say that we’re in mid October, we ran our beneficiary report or showing clients who’s going to receive all of the assets in dollar amounts and percentages and maybe that client calls us in January and says hey, we went over all my beneficiaries, I can’t find that form anymore, I wanted to review something, could it could I talk to Jamie my relationship manager and say, Mr. Mrs. Client absolutely. I’d be happy to schedule your time on Jamie’s calendar. But I also see that I have a copy of this report here. Do you still need to talk to me or should I just upload this to your box.com account? Oh, actually, you know what, just upload it and then after I view it if I have additional questions, I’ll call you and we’ll get time on the calendar. Boom. Great. Thank you, Mr. Mrs. Client want to make sure you’re being taken care of. And so we’ll have multiple points of contact. But to be honest, they don’t always need to contact me directly. I’m involved when it becomes financial planning advice, when client needs advice when the client needs maintenance or account updates or logistical things to happen. That’s not going to happen with me. Anyway. That’s going to happen with somebody on my team, whether it’s my ops team or my relationship manager, am I capable of doing those things? Absolutely! Will I get them accurate and done right the first time and quick? Probably not because that’s not what I do all day long. I empower and trust a team that are experts in what they do and are efficient in getting it done. So I’ve removed me removed my ego, surrounded myself with people that I’m not just happy to employ but people that I respect and I trust to deliver the highest caliber of Client Services and guess what they do they show up we don’t have B level team members we only have A level team members and when you employ only A level people they want to be in round other A level people they’re competitive in the best ways. They’re team oriented because they want everyone to succeed. And if they find somebody that has a co worker slacking off or not getting stuff done, they’re not going to go tattletale to me. They’re gonna bring it up directly to a co worker and say, Hey, what’s going on? I see that this wasn’t completed. How can I help you with employee scorecards where everyone can see the ebb and flows and their task to make sure that nobody’s falling behind? And if somebody is falling behind, because that can happen. Then we have the culture and team and environment where somebody’s got to jump in and say, Hey, I see the Help tag, man, let’s get this done together. What does it take to get us both out of here by Friday afternoon? I do not employ people that say, well, that’s not my job that’s theirs. And that is a Rosa Shilanski playbook rule saying the words that’s not my job will get you fired, period because that’s not our mentality. That’s not our culture. That’s not our environment. That attitude does not work for our company, period. End of sentence. No longer employed. See you later. Bye. Thank you for your time. And just because I only get involved with clients during the financial planning advice doesn’t mean I’m not involved with my team, right? And so we could be in between surges every year I tryto do a really intentional, powerful Christmas gift that is sentimental. And that’s a lot of effort to get out for 500 different households. So if I wrap up surge, which by the way, my team is also in surge, and those Christmas gifts have to get out, guess what? I’m gonna have my nieces and nephew and son in tow and I’m gonna join them and our rec room and we’re all going to count it out together. I don’t say well, I’m sorry. So and so you just have to get it done and it’s your sole responsibility. Leaders show up for their team when your team needs them the most. So as you can see, even though our surges are only during three periods of the calendar year, our clients are gonna get multiple contacts with our office. It just might not always be with that financial advisor but could be with that financial advisor and those many surges are a great time for not only for those regular accountants in meeting with clients, but also those one off things that come up and need to get on the calendar and scheduled for. And the importance buying those mini surges is also telling our team that they have a placeholder. They have a place that if a financial advisor needs to jump on the phone and get back to a client about something, that they can absolutly can. Because while most of our clients, in fact gosh we have 500 households and I think we have two clients come to mind that just they really don’t want to talk to the team. They want to talk to their financial advisor, that is just their personality, but we also set a standard that while they might like to only talk to their financial advisor, the rest of the team is involved. And if you don’t want the rest of the team involved, no problem, Mr. Mrs. Client, I completely understand you’re just not best suited for our office. We all work harmoniously together. And if that’s a deal breaker for you, I want to honor and respect that and I’d love to make a recommendation of another financial advisor who just might be more appropriate for you than I am. It is okay to set standards with clients and tell them who they are going to be communicating with and who gets them the answer to their questions that they have the most and all roads don’t have to lead back to you. In fact, somebody in your office just might be a lot better suited to answer most of the client questions and then you are as long as they’re not revolving around financial planning of course. So action items for onboarding new clients and how to set standards that first year. Again, remember that you got to set good expectations what ever you start in the beginning is going to be what lasts until the very end and this happens in all ways right? If you drop everything and make a Wednesday 7pm appointment and guess what that client is always going to expect you to do. You’re always going to have to drop everything and accommodate their schedule. If you’re driving to their house on Saturday and Sundays. Guess what? That client is always going to want you to do. This works with all relationships ever, right? That this is with friends, this is with neighbors, this is with colleagues, this is with clients. What you start in the beginning is going to last until the end. And remember boundaries are healthy. They don’t just keep people out. They keep you and your absolute best. And if you’re constantly making exceptions and you’re constantly breaking the process, you’re not going to be at the best and also your team is not going to rely on you. So whether you have one people you cannot expect your team to follow all of the processes and steps that you have laid out if you are so casually willing to break them yourself. Why would a team member want to do that? And this is rule number one in life do what you say you are going to do. And so if you have a policy and process in place, you have to set that expectation you have to follow that policy and process. No I’m not speaking to emergencies. emergencies are emergencies for a reason that means they are infrequent. And they are not common. You might think that there are emergencies but there really aren’t that many emergencies that we have to go through in life. That is why they are so dramatic when they do happen. That’s why they’re so significant. That’s when clients do get the 7pm or Saturday for a phone call is because they are not something that is regularly happening in your life or theirs. You have to lay out what your financial planning process is for that client. They’ve got to know where they’re headed towards, right. So like them being adrift on the sea and you’re coming in and you’re plotting a course and navigating them to the destination that they want. They will be compassionate towards how long it takes if they understand that they are achieving things throughout time. I use the metaphor of a financial planning house. I walked you through how we set expectations for solid foundation framing and then doing all the dressings, use that metaphor rip it off, talk to clients about it and make sure that they understand that in this experience in this engaging you to be their financial advisor that financial planning is a verb, you’re going to do a lot of things and a lot of them are going to happen in the beginning of your relationship. But then it is not just put it in neutral and coast throughout. Instead, you’re going to be continually delivering massive value because you’re going to be reinforcing so if we take that example that I gave you about setting that financial foundation and that’s the estate planning in two or three years when we do an estate planning review. I’m gonna say Mr. Mrs. Client when we first started working together you might recall that I called this building your financial house and we both agreed that in order for any house to withstand the weather unforeseen time it has to have a solid foundation, oh, yeah, do we have to remember that? Great. We call that your estate planning. We wanted to make sure we had all your affairs in order and things are documented as they should be today because life has changed over the last couple of years. I want to take a few moments and I want to make sure we’re reviewing all of our beneficiary designations and the title of how we have all the accounts. I’ve also done a cursory review of all four if they have three out of four or four out of four estate planning documents and I want to make sure that these are still your best interest right now and this is as you want everything to be set up. Mr and Mrs Client, You will remember that when it comes to estate planning you can make unlimited amount of changes to your estate plan, as long as you’re alive to do that, and we’ll get a good chuckle out of that. And so it will remind them that just because we started a flurry of activity when they first started doesn’t mean we’re gonna get [..] on the planning as the years go by, and we do review a lot of last will and testament and trust several years down the road, because a lot of times people are going to want to update the role that other people play inside of their estate plan based on that person’s current life situation current physical or mental status, as well as their financial maturity as the years go on. And that is why we deliver those value ads every single quarter. And we recycle some of them every few years because those things can update and change and they’re just as important and I want that financial planning client to know that what we started in the beginning is going to be true until the end. And because I said this was so important for us to check then build upon that foundation. It is just as important for me every few years to go back and make sure it is accurate and solid. And when I bring on a new client I’m also going to get out of my own head trash. And thinking that we’re not talking or comunicating with clients, I’m gonna verify first, right? I’m not going to be banging down every door of every single one of my team members offices to say when have we talk to this client, what happened blah, blah,

blah. I’m gonna bring up Infinity. I’m gonna look into our CRM, I’m going to see our points of contact. I’m going to see how many phone calls were made inbound, outbound all the emails, and I’m going to put that worry to rest because I know just because I’m only talking to the client every couple of months doesn’t mean my team isn’t talking to them more frequently. Okay, TPR Nation this has been Jamie Shilanski. This is an episode of Worlds to Conquer where we went through how we surge with new clients, setting expectations with them right from the get go building that financial house and then also taking out the head trash of thinking that your team isn’t talking to your new clients. Trust in your processes, trust in your system and by golly trust in your team!

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