The Modern CPA Success Show: Episode 125

Tyson Ray, CEO and Co-founder of Form Wealth Advisors, joins the show to share his unique approach to wealth management, emphasizing the importance of building strong, personal relationships with clients. He discusses the "total relationship" concept, which includes life, wealth, and care plans, and highlights the need to understand clients' short-term goals and concerns. The conversation also covers proactive financial planning, collaboration with other professionals, and the significance of open communication. Tyson's insights aim to help advisors provide comprehensive, client-centered services that align with evolving client needs.

Intro (00:00:00) - Welcome to the Modern CPA Success Show, the podcast dedicated to helping accounting firms stay ahead of the curve. Our mission is to provide you with the latest and greatest insights on cutting edge tools, innovative marketing strategies, virtual CFO services, and alternative billing methods. Join us as we change the way people think about accounting.

Jamie (00:00:22) - All right. Adam. Well, we were just talking. It's been a while since you and I have podcasts together, so, I was glad to be brought on to the show today and with our talk with our guest, Tyson Ray.

Adam (00:00:30) - Yeah, I mean, good guy. I mean, just a different perspective. I think, you know, we kind of live in our financial world, and sometimes I think we forget what we can learn listening to other service professionals. So, his unique perspective and how he builds relationships, I think is really cool and I think the audience will find it valuable so, let's, let's jump in.

Jamie (00:00:49) - Awesome. Sounds good. Hello, everybody. Welcome to today's show.

Jamie (00:00:53) - You have a guest host here with Jamie. So, I'm going to try to live up to the big expectations that Tom usually sets for you guys but I'm excited to be on the show. I'm excited for today's guest as always, we have Adam Hale here with us.

Adam (00:01:06) - Hey, Jamie.

Jamie (00:01:07) - All right. And then our guest today is from Form Wealth Advisors. His name is Tyson Ray and he's going to really help us with a lot of different areas when it comes to wealth management. So, welcome to the show, Tyson, and tell us a little bit about yourself.

Tyson (00:01:19) - Yeah. Thank you for having me on. I think the introduction of myself, I was asked the other day, who am I? I'm like, well, I'm a believer. I'm a husband. I'm a father. I am the CEO and co-founder of Form Wealth Advisors, and I'm someone who gets out of bed every morning and trying to help make life better for our clients and people in our community and so, I'm happy to be on and try and help bring that message to you guys, through this podcast.

Adam (00:01:48) - That's great. The. Yeah, I think that where this kind of goes in a lot of the for our audience again, it's, it's a lot of people in industry trying to deliver value to their clients, trying to be more than just the numbers and so, whenever we were talking, Tyson, we thought that the conversation, especially around the total relationship, I know you've kind of kind of coined some terminology around that and some systems, and I think it'd be valuable for the team to really hear, you know, whether or not you're in wealth management or you're on the on more of the financial side. It's all about bringing it down to kind of layman's terms and how to apply it to people's life in their situation, whether it's on the business side, the personal side with us, we're typically working with small businesses, so, they're kind of one and the same, you know, it's really hard to decouple those and so, really understanding where the owner's coming from and what their needs are is really important in everything that we do.

Adam (00:02:43) - And like I said, I know that you have kind of a unique perspective, being on the wealth management side, but I think it definitely is a lot to learn for, for us on the, you know, on the financial you know, business side of things.

Tyson (00:02:56) - Yes. No, I feel more at home, in in the realm of the business owner and working with the CPAs almost than I do the financial advisor title, which I think is the old salesman stockbroker hiding underneath the different title. I'm trying to purify my industry as much as possible for those that will listen. I think something that also kind of ties me to, the impact that you guys are having is after getting my, the, you know, doing this for a while, and then, I got to got this, you know, the CFP designation, which is kind of your inch deep and your mile wide of all the materials that the CPA exam is I had been doing the, I've been doing this for probably a decade or more.

Tyson (00:03:40) - And one of my partners came to me and basically was like, you're bored, right? Youjust it's like it's like and I'm like, yeah, you know and so, I decided I wanted to challenge myself so, I went and got a certification in business. Business exit planning. So, so it's like because. Right, you, we were dealing with the person that had the sale or they had monetized their business, or they had saved enough money to become a client that way and yet there's so many more. I think the vast majority, quite frankly, of businesses that their wealth is their business, and especially if it's a family business that's going to keep going into the family and so, they were never really showing up in the in the normal financial services world and their experience with financial advisors, quote, unquote. was someone trying to peddle them a product or sell them something, which probably they didn't need? so, I and for the last 5 or 6 years of, of bringing on and being able to help the, the business succession planning that what planning is, has just been a great, a great opportunity to use, you know, part of my degree in college with psychology, because at the end of the day, working through all the dynamics of the emotions and the egos and what are you going to do if you retire? And can they really take it over? And all the all that goes into business planning is just, is just fascinating.

Tyson (00:05:05) - But the Total Relationship is a book that we wrote. We launched that, this past summer, and it's the culmination of some processes and best practices that we've gleaned over the last 25 years. And I realized that, because the focus is on making life better for the client, it has nothing to do with it's not a book about portfolio management. It's not a book about, you know, the wealth manager, financial services necessarily. It's a book where the rubber meets the road on how to have a relationship with a client and how to communicate and ask questions in such a way that that that I think the clients are looking for, whether you're a CPA or attorney or a financial advisor. and the book was written to try and help advisors understand the opportunity that they have to step into that. I think most mis, both the CPAs that are, so practicing and focusing on what has happened and plugging into the returns and trying to save taxes in the present and looking in the past and then the financial advisors are like trying to predict life for the next 30 years and make guesses on what that's going to look like and how to make those plans, and what the total relationship really does is call us to focus on often what the client's worried about, which is what in the world are they doing in the next 6 to 12 months, maybe the next year or two? And what really needs to happen financially? And what are the opportunities cost because they can't do everything they want to do.

Tyson (00:06:31) - Often that goes into that. And so that's part of the three parts of the total relationship, is what we refer to as a life plan, which is putting that focus more on that shorter term time frame, which we can talk about then the wealth plan of how the portfolio or how their business or how their finances, pay for or need to be saved for this plan in the short term that they want to accomplish and then the care plan is how the advisor can come along and advocate and help them, sell the business, take the vacation, buy the car, give the money away, reward themselves because they work so hard and so, it's been a joy to, to kind of put together in our industry. They're coming out with all this legislation about trying to make a put the client's best interest first, and what we think the total relationship, and it wasn't written for this purpose, but what the feedback I'm getting is this becomes almost the how to guide to do that. And a lot of it is just the questions to ask and the things to focus on that we've been finding for 25 years.

Tyson (00:07:38) - This is what they're all like these are the these are the answers that they have inside themselves that we get to flush out and then help them prioritize and therefore then the tax return isn't a surprise. Therefore, their life that they want to live isn't a regret in the future and the and the depth of it. It's all about, again, being a part of that family or a part of that business, a part of that partnership that that advisor client relationship gets to be and how that how, how we get to go about being affecting that, which is just a privilege, right?

Adam (00:08:10) - Yeah. That's where that's where I see really the parallels in what we do and what you do in terms of, you know, everybody wants to know, like you get so caught up in the things that you do every single day to deliver, you know, your deliverables to the client, that you know, those, those little side conversations that you're talking about, where you're asking about what to do in life and, and all this other kind of stuff.

Adam (00:08:31) - And you're talking about their car. They almost just seem like they're byproducts because you're too busy, like shoving down the product that you just spent three hours putting together and you want to, like, talk about it and show it all off. They don't really care. At the end of the day. They just want to know, okay, based on that, I want to know, can I buy the car? Can I do this? Can I do that? And it's like, I don't know, it just doesn't seem like we leave space to prioritize those things and we don't set the conversation up oftentimes, because, again, we spend a ton of time figuring out how to do this stuff and we, you know, in education and in practice for the meeting and then we lose sight of really just being that guide, because I think that's another important call out that you know, I heard you say, and we preach all the time, the client knows the answer. You know what I mean? Like, let them talk, let them do their thing.

Adam (00:09:18) - You're there to have an opinion, number one, and ask questions. Ask tough questions. Ask smart questions. Just get the process going and then once that starts happening, you can kind of collaborate with them and help guide them through that journey and so, that's, that's the part that it's harder to teach because it's not like now don't get me wrong, there's rumble or questions. Right. And so, I know that you have some tactics there in order to add some processes to kind of hopefully standardize that to some degree to make sure that every client's kind of getting a similar relationship. And then after that it's all kind of, you know, dealer's choice. I would assume at that point, because the client is going to take you in in a few different directions. So, if you don't mind, I mean, I would love to hear more about each one of those segments and then how they kind of intersect.

Tyson (00:10:04) - Yeah. So, we'll start with the life plan, nothing to take away from financial planning and nothing to take away from Monte Carlos and nothing to take away from projecting.

Tyson (00:10:19) - You know what? What do we need to accomplish in the next 30 years? And what rate of return is possible? And in fact, the life plan we find starts and the other part of the life plan is where every client is unique and has unique experiences and unique desires. There's a lot of categories that are that at a high level, everyone has to deal with and so, for us, it starts with, and it ties a little bit back to the name of the firm right form because I, you know, we often get as is it formers at form and it's kind of both because the F in form actually stands for family and so, when whether you're coming to us and you're new or you're an existing client, before we talk about the tax return or before we talk about the planning point, or we talk about whatever it is that's on the agenda, it is, hey, how's Mom and Dad doing? Reason why is because I've had enough time in 25 years that when I stumble into a meeting and I want to start this process thinking I'm supposed to talk about a pie chart or a graph or some return or some projection, but mom just got diagnosed with stage four cancer.

Tyson (00:11:28) - Like, they're not they're like, they're that's that that's the most important thing to them in that moment. Or we got to move mom into a care facility out of the family home, or we lost dad, or we're worried about both of them and so, when we're coming in, we're asking, you know, how was, how's mom and dad? And we may find out dad's no longer with us. We'll ask, when did dad die? How old was he? We actually in our, we've built technology, our CRM, to take in some of this data and the reason being is, you know, if the client, 65, and dad died at 55, does that affect the question is, does that affect how long you think you're going to live? Because I'm going to go Monte Carlo Project. You live to 100, but you think every day is a gift, right? And so just these families, everyone has parents. They may be estranged, they may not be alive, but they can give us information to help advise better, psychological things that people process when it comes to their parents.

Tyson (00:12:24) - And then do we have any kids? Do we have loved ones we're leaving stuff to? How are they doing? You know, you want to come into the first five minutes of any relationship with anybody making sure their parents are okay if they're still with us or empathizing with where they're at in the care for their parents. As this baby boomer generation ages, and there's millions of people that are going to step through the gates of this transition of life after that, you know, and quite frankly, maybe they want to talk about the kids, but if they have grandkids, oh my gosh, you know, graduate high school or they're going to a soccer game or where they went to college, like it just brings. It's like sitting at the family kitchen table for five minutes and it just takes the it's like it's no longer a business environment. We're connecting so, it's just replacing the weather.

Adam (00:13:11) - So, you're replacing, you're replacing the weather conversation with family conversation. You know, because that's usually the that's usually the start of everybody.

Tyson (00:13:19) - It's not who won the football game. Right. It's not the sports analogies. It's not what you know did you try the IPA? It's none of that and the reason being is, in this information age, in the social media age, you know, relationships are dying off. They're not what they once were, for sure, and just by asking a few questions, it gets right to the heart of what really matters at the end, sets the table for the rest of the meeting. Especially it lets me know at the deepest levels the, what? What really drives hearts. Our family, where they're coming to me with it also and it was never really intended this way, but it also just opens up the floodgates to the referrals of helping mom and dad if they're not clients, or helping the kids as they go through life events or need help, whether they become a client or not or just speaking into the situation but so, the F-ING form stands for family in the CRM will be tracking parents client kids. right.

Jamie (00:14:18) - Go ahead. Yeah. As you said, before you get into the I think you're moving on to the next to the next one. So, I want to talk a little bit about the life plan a little bit more, because it sounds to me like I was looking at your, your notes here, and I was looking at kind of the plans you have laid out and I'm like, it makes sense to me that life plan is listed first, and it sounds similar to something we do in that first meeting, which is what we call our back of the napkin meeting. We're really trying to learn as much about the business and the business owners and their goals first, so that we can be better advisors, and that sounds very similar to what you're doing with this life plan conversation, where you're asking a lot of background questions, you're asking a lot of things that are going to help you be a better advisor. Am I on the right track there?

Tyson (00:14:54) - Yeah. But so, but we blend them together so that life plans, including family, will actually ask about the pets, because some clients care more about their pets than they care about their kids.

Tyson (00:15:03) - We'll ask them also about their health and after we jump to that, then we start getting into the life plan, which is, hey, travel and recreations as things people will sacrifice money for to go do, to just give themselves a break. And so, we're like literally finding out in the next six months, where are you going? Are you even taking a trip? I have some clients. It's like, do I have permission every year to bug you? They told me, in an ideal world, if you got to $1 million of revenue, you take a two-week vacation, but you're at $2 million of revenue, and you took. You never took a vacation because your life is business. So, family, travel, recreation. Let's talk about the house. Are we living in it forever? Or are we? Are there home improvements you want to do? And, you know, you've been saying you want to remodel the bathroom, and we set aside the $50,000 for the remodel.

Tyson (00:15:53) - But like, the, the life plan is designed to find out. What is it that they want to do, that they're afraid to spend the money to do it. One of my favorite things to say to clients is like, if you want to be a I just said it at 9:00 an hour ago, I just said it to the clients who are sitting there like, guys, you were that you are continually being afraid of running out of money, and you're stressed out and you're a multimillionaire and you can do these things and hear the money sitting in the bank account. We set it aside. Now you just got to go hire the contractor and go pull the plug on it and go on vacation while they're building it out. But so home improvements, it's these are big ticket items that people can make financial mistakes at some kinds if they haven't figured out where the funds are coming from, or it's to give them rewards for the labors of the business. And so it's different from, I want to say, everybody, but a lot of businesses have their business plan, and we need to understand what that is, but it's to try and help them realize how do you bring some of those resources and benefits from that business back into the life, to make your life better, to enjoy the fruit of your labor? And what's crazy is that we're basically asking all the questions of why we should send money to them, or where money should come from when it's counterintuitive because as a financial advisor, I'm paid a percentage of the assets we bring in here.

Tyson (00:17:10) - You think my job is to try and tell them to give me money and not do some of these things? And it's the reverse but the life plan is talking about family, talking about travel, recreation, talking about their home, talking about automobiles or major purchases or, you know, if you could, what would that list be? And years ago, the Hollywood made the movie The Bucket List, right? And with an unlimited budget and one of the guys was filthy rich they only had a one-page thing, one page of things to do, and when I've actually asked clients like, if you could do anything, what is it? I have very rarely clients who can come up with more than 5 to 10 things and just knowing what those things are helps. Then when we move into the business, or the strategy of how to take things in the future or sell them or grow, it reminds them why we're doing some of this. Because what I found is without some, without defining that life plan, that's their life plan.

Tyson (00:18:04) - But everybody has parents, everybody has health concerns. Everybody has travel or some recreation hobby that they may or may not want to spend time doing. Everybody has a home. Maybe they have two. Maybe they want to do something different. Driving a vehicle, replacing that vehicle. These are all opportunities for us to reward ourselves. That for whatever reason, I found more often we're as advisors in the permission business that the client wants to be told. Yes, you can, and quite frankly, you should because they spend their whole life saving thinking I need it for later and not realizing at some point in life later shows u and so, that's, that's that is a snippet of what the life plan looks like, where it's different than the financial plan that goes out for 30 years. It's not you want to buy a car every five years. It's, are we buying a car this year? Which car are you buying? Which make and model? You know you can trade the other one in. When are we going to do it? Which dealership? How are we funding that? And? And the reason why on the financial side of things is that early in my career, you know, someone invested the $100,000 in the market, the market went down, the client called me and bought the $60,000 car and said, I need the $60,000 from $100,000 investment.

Tyson (00:19:16) - I'm like, wait a second, this was supposed to be for forever. But then I never asked when they're buying their next car and had I known to ask that question, they would have told me, well, I buy them every 2 or 3 years, and about a year and a half I would buy one and so, I it's, it's realizing we can ask forward looking questions. So, as the advisors, we don't need to be surprised and the greater joy to me is not growing my practice from a revenue standpoint. It's how many clients I can convince to take the vacation that they would never take in. You know, make that gift to the charity that they always wanted to do with the extra or buy that car, or do that home improvement and enjoy what this money affords them to do and that's what the life plan part is of the total relationship.

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Adam (00:20:40) - Yeah, I think, you know, as a, as a wealth advisor, obviously you have a little bit more ability maybe to a little bit more permission to like to get into some of that stuff. So, on the financial side, sometimes we have to we have to like kind of slowly, you know, build that trust and, like, why do you want to know about this or why do you want. You know, I'm here to talk about that. So, we try to set the tone pretty early, like, like, like Jamie was saying, like, in that back of the napkin meeting and just point playing, and asking him, you know, what's the motivation? Why are you doing this? Where do you want to be? What do you want to get out of it? And then sometimes people don't know.

Adam (00:21:15) - So then we will throw that question out there. Not unlimited money. but and maybe, this isn't a big enough number now, but you used to say, hey, what if I gave you $10 million today? What would you do? and so what we hear is both personal and business things. Oh, I would start, you know, one, I'd retire. You know, I'm done. Like, that's all I need. I'm good. Other things are like, hey, it's set up this new division that I've been wanting to do or, you know, all these different other kind of things so, those are kind of our, you know, Kickstarter questions, I guess, if you will, to try to open up those conversations and get permission to be able to, you know, step into that personal arena, in addition, and really just explaining to them that the business is just an extension of them personally. And that's the reason why we're asking those questions. So, I that's where I see like again, us intersecting.

Adam (00:22:03) - And then whenever we do, work with wealth advisors in that front, a lot of times what we're doing is we're, you know, we'd meet with you, Tyson, and we'd say, hey, I can give you a little bit of background information so, that you're kind of on the same page, like, hey, they hate their kids. Don't talk to them about charitable contributions, not their things. Like, these are real conversations I've had, like, don't bring up dad. You know what I mean? Like those kind of things and so, having those kind of personal relationships and connections with our clients definitely make us stronger advisors and make us better partners for, you know, bringing in a wealth advisor partner. So, the client does feel more holistic relationship so, I think that's, that life plan is really cool how does that then correlate and then move into the wealth plan then.

Tyson (00:22:50) - Yeah. So, so one, one, one thought, with what you just shared is or and it's not a pushback.

Tyson (00:22:58) - It's just, let me encourage you. There you go. The boundaries that we as advisors set, we set because if you sat down with a client and said, if we're going to work together, I want to earn, I need to be given trust, because that's to be freely given. That has to be earned, it has to be to keep it. You have to earn it. Right. But I it's that I want to be able to ask you anything about any of these topics to help me do the job I need to do for you. but, how that the life plan backs into the wealth plan, which is the first and foremost, is identify what, so many people make mistakes with cash either having, too much of it or more often than not, not enough of it and so, part of the part of the wealth plan is identifying what cash we literally track, what cash balances they said they wanted to keep, and what accounts that are not part of the of the investment portfolio.

Tyson (00:23:58) - Because what we found is and I think also, clients make irrational decisions when their fears go up or anxieties go up and it's as simple as if they wanted $50,000 in the bank and that got spent down for whatever reason, that the lower that bank balance goes, the more they get anxious about things. They may have millions somewhere else, but for whatever reason, the psychology of my bank account needs to have cash in it and if it doesn't, I'm going to freak out that we just it's it and I think you could do it. On the accounting front, I think attorneys it just kind of just literally, hey, are we still with the $50,000 in the bank? Because it's not that's the biggest problem to solve before you talk about anything else, because you're not solving where their fear lies that, so usually it's, it's a checkbook balance, some type of emergency fund balance and then the life plan is helping us identify what is it in the next 12 to 24 months that shouldn't be invested in the markets? Because the problem with most financial advisors, malpractice, in my opinion, as I try and wrap all of that into some custom portfolio, especially if the cash components in there, but that portfolio fluctuates in value in the client's panic, right? On the business side of things, when you get into your accounts receivable and your lines of credit and all the other stuff, what's outside of the business to live life off of is as important as what these balances are.

Tyson (00:25:19) - And the wealth plan on that side, on the business side of things and I've been screaming this for a couple of years now is do you pay it like you like? Let's chart it out. How is our debt rolling over? Because in the financial crisis, the difference between Ford and GM is Ford rolled over their debt the year before the financial crisis happened. GM was rolling over the year. It happened. All the banks said, we're not renewing any of this and the government needed to step in and the small businesses that got pinched were all the ones that had to refinance their line of credit rolled over, or they're, you know, the term on the mortgage renewed and they had to go refinance it in the banks, like I'm not doing it and with that, really low rates we all had for years in these businesses paying attention in the next couple of years of how those tranches roll over and thinking about, hey, if we're in a scenario again where it's tightened credit and what have you, what's the plan, or do we want to maybe.

Tyson (00:26:11) - Maybe. Yeah. Okay, wait. We might lose our 3% and go up 4 or 5 or. But we might kick that out in 5 or 10 more years. You know, paying attention to that is, is part of the proactive nature of that wealth plan that in the day-to-day grind of the business, it's like they're not looking necessarily out at that. They know it's there, the line of credits there, what's the balance and topped and rates or whatever but the terms of that shouldn't be surprising. Business owners and a lot of people were surprised in that financial crisis. So, all that being said about the life plan when it comes to business owners, the we take our preferences, we take the spouses, the husband and wife through it together and part of the reason why is one of the struggles or one of the questions to ask this business in a business owner setting, and it's one of our, cards that we have that they help prioritize what's important. And one of them is business succession.

Tyson (00:27:03) - And the question we ask is, are you exiting your, you know, how are you exiting your business? Is it death or are you turning it over to somebody before you die? And they kind of look at me kind of funny because they don't like when you're exiting your business, you're either dying with it or you're going to transition in your lifetime but you are not like, this isn't forever and many want to keep it forever because that's their world, and they don't want to let it go. And that's great and an entrepreneur never, never wants to not have a business, right? I mean, the, the hardest people to deal with are the entrepreneur that sold their business, and they go stir crazy. However, the spouse is over there with the deer and headlights and frustrated or upset because they want to keep working, but they want all these dreams and hopes and part of the roles that kind of blend those things together. but. Knowing or helping? The helping the couple realize, no, we're okay.

Tyson (00:27:55) - We're going to keep it forever we're transitioning to kids through the estate or we're going to, you know, that that there's not a desire to sell but then what's the contingency plan if you die? And then it's a whole planning in and of itself is what makes the life plan unique for business owners. Hard stop. You were asking about the taxes, so I'm going to pick that back up if that's okay. I think your people can cut and paste and figure that out or leave it out one or the other. I'm not the, when it comes to the tax returns part, part of, part of the benefit of the total relationship is when the focus is on the best interest of the clients, a clients benefit so greatly if the financial advisor, the CPA, and the law firm can collaborate like they somehow and I don't think, I don't think the clients mean to do this, but like, they'll go see the CPA and get one piece of something. Then they go to the attorney and then they come back, and it's like I take down and ask for the information.

Tyson (00:28:50) - I say, is it okay if I contact? Because if you can, allow those three professions to collaborate, you are going to get better advice. It's going to go smoother because you're not conflicting with each other, especially if we're all reading off the same sheet of music. The, the ways I've helped, identify, so when it comes to the PNL of the business, I can think of a scenario where, you know, the client said they have $120,000 salary. Wonderful. I'd ask for the panels and I just review them and a year or so went by and all of a sudden, they needed to take $300,000 out of a portfolio and put it in the business and they had had a client that basically defaulted and they're waiting on bankruptcy or what have you, and it hit up their PNL, and they continued to go on and pay themselves a salary and after two years of looking at the PNL, I said, wait a second. I said, you're paying yourselves a salary of the money you put in the business.

Tyson (00:29:52) - And they never realized that they were they, with that loss of revenue through their cash flows off, and they were paying taxes on a salary that they're taking out in the business at the base was taking money that they put in as a loan. It was just like, and again, it was just an opportunity that there are things an advisor sees that the CPA doesn't see in the numbers. The CPA saw the injection of the money and the CPA was seeing the revenues maybe decreasing, but they weren't picking up on. Wait a minute. No, you're eating your own money and we had to go back and kind of fix that on the tax side of things. But the collaboration and I think that's again, where I think very much the wealth management financial advisor role is more future focused, longer term focused. I think the CPA, a lot of the taxes is the now and what's the quarter of the year plan to try and maximize taxes and strategy. But where those two can come together, I think the clients benefit greatly.

Jamie (00:30:44) - Yeah, I mean, we definitely agree and that's honestly probably what we're focused on a lot of the times is we think a lot of accountants are too, too focused on the past and so, I think that relationship and having that triangle of people getting together and making sure we're giving the same advice or at least similar advice, or sometimes even having the client listen to three professionals have different opinions on something will help them make the right decision. So, I think that's a great point. And so, I want to make sure we get to the last part of it. So, we've talked life. We've talked well I want to make sure we get through the through the care part of it. So, can you kind of go into you know, now, we are now you understand what their short-term life goals are. You understand what wealth looks like now. How do you help them care for their financial future?

Tyson (00:31:23) - Yeah. Part of it is just reminding them of what they said, right? or protecting, protecting their, their, their future self from their present.

Tyson (00:31:35) - A lot of that has to do with, doing service that's outside of the event. Meaning we do, we create in our CRM the opportunity to contact clients more frequently than waiting to either do the tax return or do an annual review. part of that care is to figure out what are controllables that people shouldn't be surprised about. A great example is last year, after some of the things that we did in the portfolio, because we on the wealth side, we manage these counts on a discretionary level is in the process of looking in the fourth quarter of doing something to the portfolio of harvesting and profits. We also paid attention on the at the account level of what the taxable capital gains were, and depending on the client's income situation, raised 10 to 20% of the depending on the client of the cash, and then sent them an email saying, can we send this to your CPA so everyone knows ahead of time before the fourth quarter, it may be more tax advantaged to you to pay it in the fourth quarter.

Tyson (00:32:28) - Then be surprised in April of next year when you get around to doing the tax return and that's again where just these are known. The wealthy side knows what every statement produces dividends and capital gains and I think there's a responsibility and a value add that the financial advisors can bring, or the client should have the expectation of the advisor to bring to the CPAs, or at least to them. You know why I'm not going to count on you knowing that on page 23, the capital gain report is there because you're just looking at the first page to go up or down, but to communicate, hey, this is what the taxable event is or something we want to do with this? Or does this cause the CPA to want to do something? in addition to that, it's caring about and in fact, this was something else I had said recently to a business owner is I think sometimes the CPAs get too focused on the tax deduction to buy a depreciating asset. Then you know what? Pay 30% in taxes.

Tyson (00:33:23) - You know, if you got a dollar and you pay 30% in the taxes and you got $0.70 left over, if that $0.70 gives you peace of mind to stick in something that doesn't depreciate and you don't have to store it, you don't have to buy it. You don't have to use it. You don't have to find an employee to run it. Like at some point, do you have enough stuff? or if you're wanting to, if your business is reaching the point and a lot of these businesses are struggling with the ability to find good workers, that maybe reinvesting that isn't going to bring you as much joy as reinvesting it back on your other side of your portfolio and getting money out of the business. Because I think, again, a lot of those deductions stay in the business, but then it prevents some of that wealth to get transferred out of the business. It is part of just caring and I think advisors' job is to do nothing but bring options to clients to consider within the realm of things that they said were kind of important.

Tyson (00:34:09) - So, I don't think it's not just a toss ton of options at them, but just ask him, is it, you know, is it better to buy a third truck that you don't need? Or is it better to maybe keep the $70,000 and reinvest it over here or allow that to be used in something that's not business related, which puts less stress on you having to sell your business down the road if you balance that better.

Adam (00:34:31) - Yeah, those are selling is.

Tyson (00:34:33) - Just the value add. What's that?

Adam (00:34:35) - No, I was just affirming what you were saying. I mean, we're always telling people never spend a dollar to save a quarter and so, that's those are hard conversations and it's just, you know, but the thing is, is like that pressure comes from the from the client. A lot of times they come to the tax profession and they're like, well, my cousin Bobby was at a bar, and he heard that his uncle could do this and, you know, so you're always fighting these things that it's like, okay, there's not a ton of just random tax deductions.

Adam (00:35:01) - So, trying to like, educate people on it's more of like structure, planning, and opportunity, you know, those kind of things and frankly, if you want to save a bunch of money, you got to put it away or you got to spend it. So, you got to decide which one you want to be able to do there and so, those conversations, yeah, we get we get prodded a lot and so, making sure that you're advocating to the client that. Yeah. And just calling them on stuff that they don't need, and I always tell clients every time they'd say, I'm going to buy a piece of machinery, I'm going to buy a car. I'm like, do you need it? Is it going to make us more money? I mean, if it's not, let's not do it, you know what I mean? Let's save the money. Let's put it in the bank. Let's invest in it. Let's do other things, like you said, personal wealth building. Because the more financially secure our business owners are, personally, the less pressure we have on the business, not only in the future, but in the present in terms of, you know, just less stressors for sure.

Tyson (00:35:54) - Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, we struggle with that one, too, with the whole Roth tax free you know, or especially the new, you know, the new Roth 401 K tax free is, you know, I keep reminding, or my take on this is, is the Roth was created in the Clinton administration, where they're trying to find a new revenue source to basically get to a balanced budget. So, here we'll take all this money that we have. We won't tax for years, tax it now all at once, spread it out over the five-year budget window and that made a ton of sense when you could spread it out. But now you get hit all at once, or you're in the highest tax bracket and you're probably always going to be in the highest tax bracket. So, now you're going to not take the deduction because it's going to be tax free and then I'm like, well, if we're in the debt that we're in in the future, muni tax income comes back in an AMT, there's nothing to stop them down the road and be like, well, if you make this much money, the Roth hasn't come back in some alternative tax, whatever.

Tyson (00:36:45) - It's just like sometimes take the deductions you can take, you know, but the, the, the other my other analogy with that is, is if the market is held constant, so if I lose 30% of the same amount of money and they can be invested the same. If you lose 30% from the day you start with the same amount of money, it never catches back up. The only hope is you'll pay less taxes on the back end of it. And it's just like and now that they did the whole ten year, that it can't sit there for forever. It just doesn't have the power anymore. But we struggle. Clients come in; I want tax free. It's like, okay, we got to pay taxes.

Adam (00:37:21) - Exactly. Exactly. Yeah.

Adam (00:37:23) - That's why I say pay me now or pay me later. I mean, that's just the way it works. So. Yeah. and that's always those are hard conversations to navigate. So, on the care plan, how can you talk to us? You know how frequently you are engaging with the client? and, you know, do you have, like, a standard cadence for those kind of things where you're revisiting, you know, the life plan and all those kinds of things? And what does that look like?

Tyson (00:37:48) - Yeah. So, let me tell you how I've done it wrong. and how we got to where we are. I did it wrong because the world said, well, the bigger the accounts are, the more money they have, the more frequently you should be contacting them. or your biggest clients to get the greatest service and what I found is, is that clients go in and out of service needs and if I kept servicing clients that didn't need the time, I wasn't having the time to service the clients that needed the time and so, two things. First and foremost, it's amazing. If you ask a client, they'll give you the answer, which is how often do you want to meet? Now, most of the time they'll ask me, well, how often do you want to meet? And again, the closer a client gets to retirement, or the closer a client gets to a business, sale, if they're exiting their business, the frequency increases on the way into that event. and the frequency decreases over six months to a year on the back end of that event.

Tyson (00:38:42) - Because what I find is people get into a rhythm of life, and a lot of times people can tell you unless you lose your job or the business goes under, it's like for the like the expectations for the next ten years, we're going to be doing these things and in, in the first year or so of a relationship will probably we at a minimum, we want to talk to that client on a quarterly basis but when we start identifying, we're in a rhythm of life, which usually is the meeting is taking less and less time. then we'll go to the client and say, hey, instead of every three months, can we go out every four? After six months to a year, we might go to the client, say, hey, can we go twice a year? We usually try and meet with people at the at a minimum twice a year, a full-fledged January view and then six months check in with a phone call and that check in will then identify. Do we need to turn back on a more frequent service system because something's bubbling up.

Tyson (00:39:37) - And then the other part of it is we tell them, if you're not hearing from us, it's because nothing's wrong on our end and we're assuming nothing's wrong on your end. If we don't hear from you, it's the same and so we can go six months. But. And we're telling them this, they're not surprised. But. And like a dentist, we're telling them, okay, we're going to meet again in October. Right. So, it's like, it's kind of planned but we're telling them, you know, life events happened, death, birth. Something happened to the business. You're just concerned. Whatever. Let us know and we'll pick it back up but I think for many years of my career, I was over servicing clients that didn't need the service, not paying attention to the clients that did. And again, I've had some clients. Nope. I want to talk to you every month. Okay. And I, I remember this like yesterday when that happened after I decided to make this switch and we had our annual review in the next month.

Tyson (00:40:25) - He wanted to come in. He came in, we sat down, and he looked at me and I looked at him like, what do you want me about? He's like, what do you mean? I said, well, you wanted to meet every month. I only need to meet with you. We talked about it every three months. So, this is your meeting. What do you want? And we went through whatever he had. Question he had the second month he came in. I said, okay, what do you want to talk about? He's like, maybe we don't need to meet every month just because it was his desire to meet every month. But I didn't. We didn't have like there was if nothing changed, there wasn't a need to do that, and once he realized that he backed off of it but his other advisor every month would pull out charts and show him spreadsheets and this is what happened, and this is their guess of the future and it's just like you're this is a this is for the rest of your life.

Tyson (00:41:04) - We don't need to do this every month and quite frankly, I think the more you do it every month, the more you get caught up in stuff you shouldn't be caught up in.

Jamie (00:41:11) - So, Jason, I think the point you made was really good about talking to the clients about when to schedule you know, I think that that's something that we don't do often enough, and we just assume that a client wants a certain schedule. So, going back and asking them, I think is really important. So, I thought that was a great piece of advice for all of our listeners. Don't be afraid to ask the question, because I think the answer they give you might be different than what you expect, and it'll help you establish those expectations. So, with that, I know we're getting right to the edge of time here. So, I want to make sure we have a have a chance for both of you guys to give your final thoughts. I thought there was a lot of good conversation here, a lot to unpack.

Jamie (00:41:41) - So, I want to give both of you a chance and I'm going to start with, start with you, Tyson and then also if you want to give the listeners how they can get Ahold of you, how they should reach out to you, that'd be great in this section as well.

Tyson (00:41:51) - Sure. yeah. So, the easiest way to get Ahold of me in this day and age is, is through that link, LinkedIn software, or our form wealth.com website as far as the book, the total relationship book is on Amazon. the audiobook for all of you that like the audio version, we made it all in like $0.99. So, it's not about we want to get information out there. This isn't about selling a bunch of books to make a bunch of money. It's about trying to change the conversation and we wrote it from the advisor and the client standpoint. So, we've gotten feedback from both sides of the House that, that, that, that, about the application thereof and I think the takeaway I would like to; I think for the business owners or for those that are clients of advisors.

Tyson (00:42:42) - Expect more. I think, you know, if you're not getting what you if you're not getting some of what we talked about out of this relationship, go find someone that's providing it and if your advisor listening to this realizes that there's a whole level of relationship that can deepen that level of trust and probably allow you to have a better. I think it's almost a better energy right to work all of a sudden feel more fulfilling when you're connecting at a level where you really care, right? The heart like it's a heart like you're a person. I want to make a difference and not just about money and portfolio and all that stuff matters but I think technology has allowed us to get into the groove that we're just plugging numbers and asking questions and just kind of missing the opportunity to have that relationship, that it's crazy that all of a sudden, the relationship is a unique value, and it should have always been that way.

Jamie (00:43:33) - Great. That's I think definitely that's something our, our listeners will take away from this.

Jamie (00:43:36) - And I think that's really important is, is it's not always just about the product you're delivering it's also about developing those relationships. So, the product you're delivering makes sense and is believable, and that you're coming at it from the right for the right point of view. So, Adam, final thoughts from you.

Adam (00:43:51) - Yeah, I mean, I think the big thing is, is just the parallels between what we do on the financial side of things on the CFO and what you can learn from just listening to people and other industries that are also I mean, everybody is on that search to find value and, you know, and I think that these conversations are super valuable and it's great to hear from other service professionals' kind of living and seeing their perspectives. We've done it whenever we worked with agencies. It kind of shaped the way we deliver our work and the way we operate internally, and I think likewise, you know, talking to people like Tyson gives us good insight onto people that are, you know, maybe coming from a different direction, but you can learn a lot from them.

Tyson (00:44:28) - Well, I think the other I think the other thing that I want to just like, kudos to you guys is, this relationship does it. It's great face to face, but it doesn't have to be. And this opportunity after Covid basically made everybody go virtual. The opportunity to bridge this relationship over video or virtually has cracked open the markets. There are no demographics anymore that are beyond your reach and because the, I think a lot of IT clientele are missing the opportunity to have that type of relationship, that they don't get face to face, they'll accept it virtually because they'll get it wherever they can get it.

Adam (00:45:04) - Yeah. Great point.

Jamie (00:45:05) - Definitely. Great. Well, thanks for all the time today like, I said, I think our listeners are definitely going to benefit from listening to this episode so, thanks to both of you guys for all the great insights.

Tyson (00:45:15) - I appreciate you having me on, guys. 

Adam (00:45:16) - Thanks.

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