Read the Transcript Below:

Matt  

Today’s podcast is brought to you by TPR LIVE. That’s right, The Rerfect RIA! Micah and myself will be joining you live and in person in Phoenix, Arizona on September 25, where we will be helping you with all things related to fees, how much to charge your clients how to adjust your fees, how to explain fees to your prospects, and of course the extreme accountability around how to make that actually happen. So go to theperfectria.com/live to get signed up and get all those important details. All right back to the show. 

Matt  

Hello, everyone and welcome to another episode of The Perfect RIA podcast. I’m your co host Matthew Jarvis and with me today’s special guests always special guests. We don’t allow any unspecial guests, special guest Claire Myers Vitale from Claire Myers Consulting. Claire is, can I say recruiter extraordinaire, like would that be the appropriate the appropriate title? Claire helps advisors build teams so and Claire you and I will talk about this. It’s less about like this pipe dream of I want someone that has 50 million they’re bringing it over with them and more of realizing, hey, my team is at max capacity. And I need to add another team member other than a Craigslist ad like where do I go? So Claire with that introduction, which I hope is good. Welcome to the show.

Claire  

Thank you. Awesome, nice to be here.

Matt  

Well, so Claire, tell us a little bit about your work in the industry. And of course before we hit record you and I were talking about actual compensation data you have not like the fishing stories that make up every industry study. 

Claire  

Exactly. Yeah. Last year, we were talking to all these clients and we played about 100 plus people in the industry every year. And we’re like, you know what, we have all this data and I keep hearing from clients. I think I should pay a $50,000 base for a CFP, who has been doing this for seven years. And I’m just giving advice, right because of my experience, but I didn’t… So let me pull some data together because I’m extremely data driven person. So I pulled a lot of the what you all see traditionally from all of your, you know, the Schwab’s and the if you’re with a big organization, they have all their comp data. And I wanted to compare it with what was actually on the market and what we were actually placing people for and turned out there was some alignment but some, some misalignments and it’s all reported differently because a base salary is different than an overall comp. And, you know, if you’re offering this person X, and they’re expecting X times two, that’s a different thing. So in the shownotes we’ll add the comps because I think that it’s a fun one. One of the common roles that I love placing I love it is the executive assistant like a really, really strong compensation. Some people want to pay an executive assistant 45,000 and some people want to go up to 150 and it just depends I mean those are just you it depends what you’re actually wanting the person obviously, which which goes into a hole so far, I could do about titles and then that’s all of it. 

Matt  

There’s only like 10 episodes we could pull out obviously a big fan of executive assistants like that’s just an incredible thing. But let’s talk about this as well as compensation thread and the compensation structure because I think you’re right against advisors, and we get some numbers in our head and most of us grew up so to speak on a pure e way you kill what you eat. We’re entrepreneurs, all of our comp is variable costs. So sometimes we assume that that’s what everybody else wants, like, everybody wants to be on pure performance payment. That’s that’s in fact not the case, Claire.

Claire  

That is in fact not the case. And you know what? To be fair, I had to learn this as an entrepreneur as well as I built my team. You know, I knew that people wanted based I always had the most. I was like everybody needs at least some sort of major bonus structure in order to be happy. That’s not the case. Not the case. I have people on my team and I done a lot of work around this, that they make a base and if we got some team bonuses throughout the year amazing, but really they make a big salary. And then some people make you know, they have their base salaries and then there have their incentive compensation because they’re more in the market hunting if you will, just like within your within your field.

Claire  

And you probably wouldn’t be able to do it as well as they can.

Matt  

Like revenue producing. Yeah, I’ve always been a big fan of coaches and outside recruiters or outside experts. And really a lot of ways Claire your role is as a coach, I’ll be an independent recruiter title because otherwise, like the only lens I can bring to every situation is the lens that I have. So again, I’m just pure entrepreneur. I’m a high quicker like we start talking like victim assistance. I can’t fathom how someone wants that. Like I’m an amazing executive sister named Rena, and she’s spectacular. She loves organizing my travel and getting receipts and rescheduling things and she’s been scheduled this podcast itself and we have this podcasts producer Amber who’s phenomenal, she’s gonna edit this podcast. This is all stuff like I would end the podcast today. If I had to do those things. This will be the last episode and this episode wouldn’t even air, but with our people it’s a whole different experience and they want something completely different.

Matt  

Oh no! That literally would not happen. They would not be, like if Amber wasn’t around there wouldn’t be a podcast. But so you mentioned like when you come in there and you’re working with an advisor who wants to build their team like how do you even even help them get started when I talk to advisors ‘Hey Matthew, what I need as a junior’ like, is that really what you need? Do you need a lead advisor? Do you need an executive assistant? Do you need an office manager? Do you need an ops person? Like… Claire, where do you even start with people on that?

Claire  

It’s that first introductory call. Yeah. And it’s really digging into what do you want. I can’t tell you how many people reach out to me and said, I want to build my team with advisors. And really, they they want an advisor to come over and bring a book. And so we get into the conversation and I say why? And really at the end of the day they want them to pay for themselves. So then we dig into it. I mean, that’s the dream, right? But that’s not always the case and there. There’s recruiters that specialize in that and they do an amazing job bringing people over with books, but if we really dig and peel back the onion, if somebody’s looking for a junior, a lot of the times it’s because they have too many clients that they can’t serve as their clients. So it comes back down to what value are you providing to your clients? And are you able to fulfill that value. If you can’t fulfill that value you need to work on what investment do you want to make in your organization? And is it with an advisor that can not only service the clients that you have but also bring some new ones in, which gets goes into compensation structure and all that. When I’m talking to clients that are along those lines that are like I want an advisor to come in and almost they don’t say it out loud, but that’s I know that that’s what they’re thinking they want the person to be able to pay for themselves. Oh, sure. Sure. May be great. But I think people need to realize if you’re offering a total compensation of let’s say, 200k Sure, overall, right. You’re offering 100 base and another 100 incentives for bringing in business. That’s not all. It’s not like you have to have a check for $200,000 ready to hire that person. You just need to be able to come up with the first 90 days of payroll, and that’s probably what you need, but the person should be able to prove their worth by that. 

Matt  

So Claire, it strikes me. This is somewhat similar like when a client comes in and they say I need to buy X investment or I need to sell X investment. And as advisors, we step back and say hang on a second. Like what let’s look at the financial plan. What are we trying to accomplish? I mean, you were basically doing that except for instead of an investment like a stock or a bond, you’re saying hey, what are you trying to accomplish in your practice and, and what’s the who that’s gonna fulfill that?

Claire  

Yeah, exactly. I have a client right now. That it’s actually two partners, one of them’s very operational focus, one of them’s the advisor and they are partners in the business and one of them absolutely thinks they need a few more lead advisors. And the other ones operations team is saying if you you’re bringing in so much business right now we need to hire a couple more investment people invest ops managers before we go and hire more salespeople. That opens up some internal conversations also with the team on can you shift people around? That’s the other conversation that sometimes comes up to is do you really need a new person? Yeah. Or is your team just not performing correctly? 

Claire  

I’m glad you mentioned that because I also thought I was gonna ask a lot of times I get the opportunity to coach lots of advisors. A lot of times they’re trying to paint over a bad system by making another hire, and we see what you have like, effect. I know that advisor last week is 1600 clients and he says hey, what I need to do is hire some more people. The first thing to do is like a client profitability analysis, you probably have a lot of clients that just need to be graduated period or have their fees raised or something hired a Junior is not going to fix that probably no higher is going to fix that problem. You have a systems issue. So as you look at practices, Claire, I mean, it’s kind of a delicate balance. Because I think an advisor calls you Claire have decided to hire someone I need this person and you’re almost like, hang on let’s pump the brakes. Like what in fact you tried to accomplish here?

Claire  

Just love it. I really do live in an abundant space. It’s like to me when I talk somebody out working with us. That’s okay. What we have it’s okay. You know this to me, they’ll respect that more than if I hire somebody for them. They pay a fee and then they realize that’s actually more of a pain for me too. Because if they realize in a couple months that they don’t actually need the person, they let the person go and we have a guarantee. 

Matt  

Yeah, oh sure.

Claire  

Then I’m kind of stuck in this weird… Do you need a replacement? And that has happened in the past where we end up replacing and it’s not the same role. We are replacing a completely different role because the person ended up saying I don’t actually need that. Yeah, the person to hire they were great, but they didn’t actually end up needing that. I’ve learned. I’ve learned to do really in depth fact finders basically.

Matt  

Yeah, we were similar over best lessons the hard way right like that. The easy lessons do we never remember those ones. Claire’s you’ve done your work and your compensation study. Have you noticed trends about kind of like some rules of thumb for for hiring, right? Whether you like when have you seen that advisor needs to hire their first relationship manager or a junior or an executive assistant? Like are there any trends that have merged? So someone can say if my practice is at x, I’m probably need to consider why at that point.

Claire  

Great question. My initial gut reaction was people need to hire an executive assistant a lot sooner than they do. Yes. Because then they get stuck as an entrepreneur, they get stuck in the wrong habits and then it actually is harder for the executive assistant if they’re good to come in and like claw some of that stuff back. As it relates to like a producer, somebody who can meet with their clients. So you know, titles are all over the board but a junior advisor. The second you feel like your calendar is at capacity or even before that is when you should start thinking about hiring. Probably before that, right and just to give you some timelines on that, if right now you’re listening to this, and you I know that this will be released a little bit later, but I want to hire two quarters from now. Okay, well just know that it takes between 45 days and 60 days to actually find the person once you decide, then it’s likely that they’re going to give two weeks notice so you’re looking at two and a half three months or more or before you actually get the person you’re or more before you actually get the person. So if you’re already feeling like a little tug in your calendar, like oh my gosh, I’m normally what happens is: I’m so busy. I don’t have time to hire somebody. I mean that’s that’s normally what we’re hearing. So if you’re feeling that you probably shouldn’t have hired a while ago.

Matt  

Claire. It’s interesting to me that distinction of if you’re looking to hire another advisor, it’s based on when your calendar is nearly full. All too often I talk to advisors who say like, Hey, I have all these clients I don’t want to work with or hey, I want to make all this more money. Like they’re almost hoping that this this advisor hire will be some kind of magic bullet. Again, that’s not really the case in real life. Like if you have more clients and you’re going to serve, assuming they’re all profitable clients. That’s the hire not going to magically get another 50 million or suddenly my prospecting that I haven’t ever wanted to do like that’s suddenly going to work.

Claire  

Right and then you would hire somebody to meet that deficit, for lack of a better term, in your own practice or in your own… You know, if you’re not doing a great job of prospecting the clients that you already have, and maybe you’re not working with some of your BC clients will hire somebody to go work with your B and C clients, but hire somebody who knows how to prospect. Yeah, hire somebody who’s going to get all those ancillary sales and all of those referrals to from a recruiting perspective, it’s attractive that you’re giving them clients. Sure, right. So they’re not coming into something where they’re completely have to build something on their own, and incentivize them to also bring in their own clients. So incentivize them on referrals from the book, but then also incentivize them on bringing in. So you’re worried about revenue and bringing more income into the business, but also wanting to service your clients. Make sure you’re finding the person that can fill those gaps. 

Matt  

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Well, it speaks again, to the person like yourself who can kind of see that objectively like right, I’m looking at your practice and I know you’re saying this, but kind of what you need to do is that. Claire would love to talk a little bit more. You said that having a client that you could give to this call Junior advisor for lack of a term another lead advisor is an attractive thing in recruiting. What else makes it an attractive offer. I think sometimes again, sitting in my seat, I think well I’ll just I’ll just post this ad and you get to work with Matt Jarvis. And that itself is drawn. It turns out like that’s not the same draw that I think it is people like that.

Claire  

Now, if somebody’s selling you it makes it a little bit more of a draw for sure. Sure. Yeah. But I mean, my favorite the other day and the person that I talked to is listening to this I’m not on this, but it was just really funny. I’m like, What is this person get if they come work with you that’s different from going to another firm? They weren’t offering any sort of like incredible compensation. Their value prop was like, which I help people on you know, I’m like trying to dig trying to find a value prop. And he’s like, Well, they get my mentorship. Like that’s great. Okay, and and what, right? So my biggest ask for people when you’re looking to hire, whether you’re working with a firm or you’re going out on your own and trying to hire that way, you’ve got to make sure that you have that you have a really strong value proposition. So Matthew Jarvis is is an incredible mentor and coach and all the things right and and it does the compensation look decent. And is there some flexibility in that work schedule? Do they get some control because that’s as much as some people in this industry do not want to hear it? That is a huge driver right now for people moving. There are a lot of  teams that want people to be in the office five days a week, and that’s fine for some firms. And we’re hearing a lot of, well, I have to come in five days a week I’d even I’d even make a move if I had to go only four days, like just one day a week of flex this adds to your value prop so you yourself could be an incredible value add. I have a client who works in a very specific niche market like that’s a huge part of their value proposition. So it’s really having your your value proposition your ideal client really honed in compensation is a driver to attracting the right person, not everything, surely, of course, but it is a it is a big driver. And then of course, you know, equity compensation and things like that path, especially with those lead advisors. A path to some sort of ownership is actually really attractive. I would say that for also the COO type person. Oh, sure, sure. Path to some sort of ownership or stake in the business as important.

Matt  

It sounds like close you describe it as it’s not too dissimilar to try and to attract clients. No, right. So there has to be a value proposition. I mean, I guess this is where we’re tainted by our own lens like those of us have in the industry a lot of time we remember and I guess maybe in some places is still true like anybody who could fog America get a job as a financial advisor. There was no salaries 100% we’ve killed and so sometimes we still have this mindset of like, I am doing the world this immense favor by opening a job and it’s like that’s, that’s not the world like anybody that you want as an employee has 100 different places they could go and if your value proposition is you have electricity, right? It’s like… A friend of mine used to say anything that everyone else can say is not a value proposition. And electricity was his example. Like imagine like we have cutting edge electricity in our office like that’s weird. Who does prehensive Finance play cool, who doesn’t? What’s the value proposition?

Claire  

Yeah, and I think I think that can bring into what you do in the community and things like that, right as part of your value proposition. Who are you? As like I know, Matthew Jarvis and your brother you do a lot of work, helping other advisors get their businesses going and the multiplier effect there on what you can do and how many more clients can be served because of the work you do. To me that’s a value prop. Right so me that I think though, as a recruiter, I can go to a candidate and say we’re working with this firm, that is leaps and bounds above other firms that are selfless. They do. Like, you know, we can sell it, and that’s what it is. It’s like, you know, recruiting, I remember growing up as a recruiter, recruiting that 100% Commission advisor and we structured our day exactly like an advisor. Exactly. Like we had the same, actually more meetings to be honest, because our interviews were shorter than a discovery call. But we prospected we hunted, we met with COI, we did all of those things, and we needed to sell and there’s nothing different now to be honest.

Matt  

There’s an interesting point I want to draw for our listeners, Claire, and I’d love your thoughts. As a listener you think well, I don’t I’m not Matthew Jarvis, I’m not Claire. I don’t have this network, right. I don’t have these cool things. Like I don’t know what the value is. But that’s where you can differentiate with the benefits, right? You mentioned this example of flex schedules right or the ability to work from home one day a week. Right? So this doesn’t necessarily the extreme of like Elon Musk saying, hey, come to the office or pretend to work somewhere else. There’s benefits you offer people that meet a lot, especially in small businesses. I mean, a lot that aren’t just writing big checks. Right. So I’d be curious to hear a little bit more from you, Claire, on how do some of those benefits packages look, aside from the basics of yes, you’ve got to pay a good salary and you’ve got to have solid benefits like what are things especially smaller firms can do to attract talent like that?

Claire  

So good. Yeah. So one of them that I saw recently that I just was actually a major selling point when we recruited their their new hire was a sabbatical after the it was after three years, they were able to take a I think it was a three month sabbatical. Wow, that’s interesting. It helped attract somebody who wants to stay somewhere. Yeah. And you can play with that, right? You could say, a six month sabbatical at 10 years or whatever. But something that’s attractive to somebody who is loyal and wants to stay somewhere. The other benefit I’ve seen, community service days tend to do really well you know, hey, we do trips. We take four community service days a year, you know, today’s or thing. So some people take their community service day on earth day or things that are a little bit less tangible and more having to do with flexability is a big one.

Matt  

Yeah. And I think the brilliance of that is it’s not actually costing you anything as a firm, right? So on the one hand, you can look and say, Oh, we’re losing four days of productivity. No, no, you’re not actually because they weren’t working out for days. Anyway, like people were in the chair. Right? Is that disrespect to employees? It’s just like all the data shows us that people aren’t ever actually working 40 hours a week, they’re there possibly, but also like just selflessly, that work in the community is going to improve. That’s like marketing for your firm. So to give people community service days or community service afternoons, that is a no lose proposition. And especially Claire, you’re very passionate about foster care, right? Especially if you can touch on something that someone’s really passionate about. So if I find out at the interview process Hey, Claire’s really passionate about foster care cool is there some accommodations I can make for that at the end of the really isn’t costing me anything and it’s gonna mean the world to that employee, the absolute worlds. And it’s gonna make the world a better place, by the way. I mean, we’re still in business here, but it’s literally going to make the world a better place.

Claire  

Absolutely. One that just popped to mind that when you said that specifically around foster care, almost every community in the United States, at least a surrounding community has what they call a closet. So they’re called foster care closets. It’s specifically designed you would donate you can donate clothes formula, things for foster children but also youth so like you know, we donate house goods, you know, car coffee maker and things like that and our adult clothes for the kids are in the foster care system up to 25. But one thing as a firm you could do if somebody’s passionate about foster care is partner with the foster care closet. And once a quarter do a little donation drive. Everybody always wants to have nice you know, nice clothes, nice toys nice all the things because it’s for foster youth but selfishly it’s for foster parents as well. But I got a call for a four year old the last child I had was an infant. I don’t have the right car seat. I don’t have the right bedding. I don’t I don’t have the right things. So I’ve got to go to this closet and they have everything I need for that placement that a lot of the times are all of us are emergency places. So yeah, I think just doing things that stand out that you and the selection process can talk about. Or if you’re working with a firm they can they can say like, Hey, this is a really cool thing. This Habitat for Humanity. I follow a lot of firms obviously, one just had a puppy so it was they had a local rescue come in with a bunch of puppies. They paid them on a donation to the rescue. And then they played with puppies for two hours and it’s just a fun little things that you can do that are great for the community. The other thing I’d say actually when the person starts, there’s things that you can also do in a selection process that can set you apart that are a benefit. One is you know, a lot of firms have candidates take an assessment. And that assessment takes, sometimes depending on the assessment, but sometimes between half an hour and an hour and I’m seeing more and more employers recently, say hey, if you take this I’m gonna give you $50 gift card via Amazon. Or, if I’m gonna have you cut interview on site for half a day, I’m gonna pay you, however much an hour to make it worth your time. So it helps the employer to get really diligent about who they’re actually bringing in. But it also puts a level of respect to the employee as well. Yeah, and I haven’t seen that until recently. And I think it’s again working with those firms that are doing those things or helped set them apart from.

Matt  

 Yeah, it really is. It really makes me think of Joe Polish from Genius Network his book What’s in it for them, he just like anything you can do to make somebody’s life a little bit easier. Now, I guess I would throw in a small word of caution. Like if you put out a Craigslist ad for employee and you’ll tell people you’ll pay $50 to show up like that. That’s not going to work. 

Claire  

Definitely don’t do that. 

Matt  

Which I noticed you were thinking of Claire… 

Claire  

I mean it could work to get you volume. You’ll get volume, but you’re gonna have to do more work. You’re already gonna get a lot of volume with your posting. Without that. You don’t need to add fuel to the fire.

Matt  

But if you have a filtering mechanism, which is a recruiter hire person that they’ve screened that down they’re going to have three or four really good candidates like these aren’t random people trying to get unemloyment benefits. You have to show them the respect to saying hey, I value you enough to pay for your time that goes so far. I guess it depends on who you’re trying to hire. You’re trying to hire the person who says oh, yeah, work at Jarvis financial is probably my least bad option. I’ll go with that. Are you trying to hire the person who’s like holy smokes like I wish I would have found the job 10 years ago, and I want the latter group like I want Claire to tell me, like, this person is dying to take this job. Now this person’s like, well, they’re looking at four offers if you could like raise it by five grand to take that with like, that’s not what I’m solving for.

Claire  

The other thing along that same lines. I prefer talking to candidates that don’t have to make a move. I think that it puts them in a position of strength, right? If I reach out to somebody because they have the credentials that I need, and they’re open to conversation. I know I poke them a little bit but they’ll have to make a move. So it’s my job or your job ifs you’re doing on your own to really get them in the door to impress them with your team. When people are on the market. It’s fine. Obviously there’s a lot of people on the job market right now. They’re incredible, but sometimes they are fielding multiple offers and it just feels a little bit different as well.

Matt  

I’d love your thoughts on one last thing and we need to wrap. As advisors we typically have a really low follow through scores like our attention spans are like childish at best and what tends to happen I see this all the time advisors I really gotten ohh, I have to take care of this myself. I listen to the podcast with Clair and sounds pretty easy, I’m supposed to add and then to get a bunch of applicants and to get burned out after looking at two or three resumes and they just hire that person because they’re, they’re just burnt out. I’m curious if I’m dealing with ceases or this is something you’ve seen, I guess I’m just really speaking to the importance of knowing your weakness and bringing in people that can complement that.

Claire  

Yes. Are they gonna look at a resume? They see that 3000 people applied and they’re like, nope, get to my job, you know. And the reality is, there’s technologies that can help with that, right? Of course, most recruiters can filter that 40,000 down to 15. really easily. But yes, the attention span, it’s also are you screening for the right things more commonly I see somebody who will do all of that. They’ll actually go through the resumes and they’ll pull up people who have the credentials, you have just a checkbox items. They have a CFP, they have five years of experience. That’s, you know, they hit those boxes, so they just interview those people. And they’re not screening for personality. They’re not screening for cultural fit. They’re like, does this person have that credential? You’re hired. That is probably the most common mistake I see. So if you’re doing this on your own, my biggest caution is make sure you understand what kind of culture you want. You know, we have a client who jokes around so much, but the person also needs to be a little thick skinned because they’re like, rough and tumble. And if you have somebody that came in and that was a little bit too sensitive, the person wouldn’t do well. So we need to we need to make sure that we understand that and screen for it. 

Matt  

Yeah, that makes so much sense. Let’s transition into some action items. Of course our listeners know that this podcast is not about knowing it’s about doing and I’ll go first. Action on number one, I would say and this is just speaking to my own experience as an advisor if you need to add team members, use a recruiter use someone. Yes, I know it’s expensive and you look at goodness that’s so much money until you think about the value of your time, like how many clients is that equivalent up? And like how many times do I want to screw this thing up? And what will be the cost of that? I promise you you have to take my word for this you. Claire you and I can compare numbers on the day. It’s worth every penny of that. So action number one: if you’re going to add someone to your team, don’t screw around trying to do it yourself. Hire someone that could be Claire could be somebody else. We’ve had other recruiters on the show as well. Don’t do this thing yourself.

Claire  

And on average, it takes about between 100 to 150 hours depending on the role. It’s crazy. And then I actually was doing the math on all the roles that we’ve placed and it’s like oh no, it definetly worth it.

Matt  

Suddenly that seems really reasonable. 

Claire  

And that’s it with all the that’s with all the AI technologies and our LinkedIn recruiter seats and all that stuff that all recruits. Other action items, I would say work on your value prop. How do you take the value prop that you use with your clients and flip it over into attracting the right talent? And along with that would be your LinkedIn presence. So as much as you can host some of your community involvement, client testimonials, things like that on your LinkedIn just so if talent goes and looks for you, you know, I know some people don’t value their website as necessarily something that’s that that important. Clients are looking at that but talent is definitely looking at it. And I would say specifically LinkedIn presence. Okay, good to know everything. I just have to say please, everybody, look up their foster carers closet that please donate to their foster care closet. It’s it’s a really incredible resource in many communities and just so important for the youth but also the foster parents. And then it just a little tidbit if you are going to do this on your own . If you are going to try to do it on your own. Which please, by all means, but I agree that it’s good to have some help. But if you’re going to do it on your own, utilize Chat GPT for your job descriptions, don’t write a four page job description. Give Chat GPT or some thing a brief description of what you’re looking for, say create a job description and it will do that for you. Don’t take too much just to save a little time. If you’re gonna post on LinkedIn sponsor it. Oh, sure. And don’t leave it up for more than a week. That doesn’t look good, so just those couple little things. And then of course, if you need to find us, our website will be in the show notes and there’s some there’s some tips and tricks on there, as well. 

Matt  

So we’ll have in the show notes, of course, a link to your company Claire Mayers Consulting. We’ll also have a link to the compensation study and and a couple other great resources. So, Claire, thank you so much for these insights. I really appreciate you sharing them for all of our listeners. Until next time, happy planning!