Ep #417: Still Standing, Still Evolving: What 10+ Years Inside XYPN Actually Looks Like

Alan: Welcome to behind the Advisor with xypn, your behind the scenes look at the challenges and victories fee only advisors encounter as they launch, run and grow their independent firms. Join us for a deep dive into real life stories, frontline insights and the actionable strategies it takes to build a thriving, purpose driven firm on your terms. Today we are rejoined by Scott Frank, founder of Stone Steps Financial, who first appeared on XYPN radio back in 2016 on episode 49 to talk about what it took to start a firm from scratch. A decade later. We're not here to remake that episode. Instead we're revisiting Scott's story to just explore what's changed his business, his niche, his mindset and how being part of X, Y, PN over the long haul has helped shape that evolution. This conversation is really about longevity, adaptation and what real advisors actually look like after the launch phase fades. Scott, welcome back to the show.

Scott Frank: Thanks for having me, man.

Alan: Yeah, we've been a decade, only been a decade. What has changed? I mean it's, I've got a bunch more kids, a little more gray hair, a shorter beard.

Scott Frank: I mean it's a lot, a lot has changed. Yes, yes, we're, yeah, we're, our kids are definitely older and uh, we're both hopefully a little wiser with all the experience we've had in 10 years.

Alan: One would hope. Yeah. So you know listeners, if you want to go hear Scott's story, sort of career story, how he decided to launch a firm, what that first year look like, uh, you can go to XY planning network.com 49, uh, and you can go listen to that. But, um, take us back. You know, we're, we're sitting here 10 years ago. Can you remind me sort of where you were at with the firm in terms of like number of clients? Um, like sort of if you had, I don't remember you really having a specific niche at that time.

Scott Frank: This is so good. Yeah, I did not have a niche at that time. Let me go back and see if I can find it. I have it on a one page plan what my total clients were. Oh, here I can go 2017, let's see. So I would have had about 22 clients at the end of 2016.

Alan: Okay.

Scott Frank: Um, and grew from there because you

Alan: really came out of gate hot. Like that first year was fast for you.

Scott Frank: Yeah, my average revenue, this is going to make people laugh because we've told everyone to charge way more. Um, but my average revenue per client end of 2017 was $3700.

Alan: Okay. So 3720 ish clients. And then where is the firm at today?

Scott Frank: So the firm today is. We have just over 90 households, about 1.2 million, 1.15 million somewhere in there of revenue, about 130 million of would, um, be considered, like, assets under management.

Alan: That is awesome. I mean, if nothing else, congratulations. Like, that's. Thanks. Um, I'm gonna have to pull up my notes. I saw this quote, and I want to start using, um, is. I. I'm not sure how to pronounce his last name. Miles Adcox Adox. But he says, what a privilege to be tired from the work you once begged the universe for. What a privilege to be overwhelmed by growth you used to dream about. What a privilege to be challenged by a life you created on purpose. And what a privilege to outgrow the things you used to settle for.

Scott Frank: Oh, yeah, there's so much truth to that.

Alan: I just. Yeah, I just. Man. And. And had we been sitting here 10 years ago having this conversation, that was not what was on my mind. It's all about, like, where do we want to go and how do we want to grow and all of that.

Scott Frank: And so for me back then, I remember exactly what it was, is I wanted to grow our firm so that my wife didn't have to work if she didn't want to. And that was really her biggest dream was to be a stay at home mom. Um, you know, a lot of times, the way that we work with clients all the time, and I think the listeners at home should think of this for themselves, because I think they use it as well, is that, you know, people come see us as advisors thinking they're here to talk about one thing, money, but they're really here to talk about four things that they get to invest. And that's time, energy, talent, and money. Because they're all interchangeable, right? And for my wife, she wanted to use all of her time and energy and talent, really to focus on being a mom. She didn't want to have to make money to do that. And you obviously don't, sadly, get paid to do that. Um, too bad. Be nice if you did. But, um, that was the main goal, was just to get it to where she could be free. I thought we would hit that in, like, three years. Um, did we start 2015 maybe? I haven't said we'd do it in two years. I was overly ambitious. Um, she retired. She still does consulting work, but stopped working full time in 2019.

Alan: Okay. So it took about four years. And, uh, going into Covid even. Yeah, yeah, I guess. How have you. Well, okay, so that was 10 years ago. The goal. What's the goal today? Like, when you think about, like, what do you, why, why do you show up every day at this point?

Scott Frank: So I'll tell you, I got a little ungrounded, uh, when I hit our original goal because we all talk about, especially in like the, the groups of like X, Y, P, and I'm leaving because I want to have enough and I know what I want to do. And you know, you kind of, you kind of wrap your mind around what that is. And for me it was hitting this income number. And once I hit it, I could just be like, I don't have to do anything else. But I became super ungrounded because all of a sudden I had all this extra time and I don't want to take 200 days off a year because. Right. Like, I actually enjoy work. So it took me a while to recognize some therapy along the way. Maybe a little bit of a, a midlife crisis. They're all. Everyone gets to do one. Yours is coming, sir. Um, but basically what it came down to was, oh, look, the things that I want to spend my time, energy and talent on, I can still do that and it's okay to make more money.

Alan: Mhm.

Scott Frank: That was a mental block I had to overcome.

Alan: Yeah. The shifting goal post, you know, I mean, we learn about this in CFP school. We do this with clients every day that, you know. Well, you know, in. I think listeners know the statistics. Like if you ask somebody with a million dollars, what it takes for them to be comfortable, it's 2 million. If you ask somebody with 100 million, it's 200 million. Uh, we do the same thing as business owners where we sort of set this goal and then we achieve it and it's like do this. The goal posts are constantly moving. So I guess how have you dealt with the moving goal posts of the firm? And do you kind of feel like another change is coming or are you pretty settled on, on how you've structured the goals for the firm?

Scott Frank: At this point it is so. So to me, where I, where I landed, what I'm trying to get at for you, the point I was making there is that I realized money isn't the goal. The goal is where do I spend my time, energy and talent in my life at this point. Right. And so at this point being a dad and like, um, coaching basketball for seven year olds, which is crazy. Um, you know, and, and doing things and then being, being there for them, for all the events that they have, that is number one for me, then it's running the business. Right? So I'm not looking to go put my pedal to the metal and go grow, um, 10x in three years, you know, But I do have a great deal of time, energy and talent that I can deploy at work and still do all the things I want to do at home and with friends and with family. And so within that frame, what we're doing is we're building one diamond team here at Stone Steps currently. Um, so we already have it. It's already full with the three people that need to be on that team. Um, the next thing that we're doing is we're targeting. We have shifted for years to working more so with tech and biotech executives. So we work directly with them. Um, I did a really poor job of, uh, using, uh, podcasting to generate business. My friend who I co hosted my podcast with for years, did a really great job with that. He, uh, now has a multibillion dollar RIA called Root Financial. He's just down the street about like, you know, eight blocks. Um, so now what we're going to do is we're going to target, um, a very specific, focused, um, podcast YouTube channel for that cohort to start spinning up the marketing on it more to go fill up our team to where we have, you know, 160 to 200 clients operating on that team. Um, and then we'll look to add other teams as time moves forward. That's where we're headed. Um, I think the other big thing to think of there for myself is I, in 2016, was still in discovery of not understanding, um, why people weren't following through on the financial plans that I was giving them. Um, and actually it was you that turned me on to, um, this guy George kinder and his three questions. Um, and I actually went and took that training in 2017. Um, since 2019, I've been teaching it. I was just in Hana teaching, uh, a few X, Y PN members actually, um, and others, um, how to basically actively listen with empathy.

Alan: So I definitely would use.

Scott Frank: I'm just going to coalesce that all together. So what we're looking at doing now, the next phase of Stone Steps is I want to build a firm in which we have a media channel that's for a specific niche of client that's going to have a specific brand name. Um, and so we're starting that now, but they're eventually going to filter to Stone Steps where a team is Going to focus with tech folks is going to be there as we do that and get really good at it. I want to turn on different channels, kind of like the cereal aisle of your, um, grocery store. Like, what was your favorite cereal growing up, Alan?

Alan: Fruity Pebbles?

Scott Frank: Who makes it?

Alan: Gosh, couldn't tell you.

Scott Frank: That's, that's the whole point. I want to make media brands that are designed to get people excited about planning and helping show them how to solve their problems. They're going to come to stone steps, but we're General Mills. They don't care who we are. They care about the brands above. But it's all going to be financial, life planning, centric. So everyone's going to have a Kinder registered life planner, uh, advisor doing that work for them to help them really full fully step into their authentic life. And we're going to help them align their money with it. That's where we're going.

Alan: I mean, if we go back 10 years, you again, you really hadn't discovered this niche. You hadn't discovered this process of, of doing what I, I call real financial planning. Uh, and that's the name of our

Scott Frank: old podcast, is real financial planning. Yes.

Alan: So I would say most advisors view just leveraging, you know, the kinder, the three questions and life planning and all that. Like that is enough of a niche because that's, you know, that is solving like an incredible challenge that, that every advisor faces. But you're going one step further and, and taking that and applying it to a specific profession, I guess. What, what is, or uh, is industry. What. What's taking you into the industry versus staying more general.

Scott Frank: It's who showed up, right? It's who shows up. They have complexity, they need help. The thing about the work with kinder and there's other. And the kinder works on a spectrum of life planning. Financial life planning, if that's the word. Right. So there's like pinder, money quotient, um. Oh my gosh, uh, the geometric wealth guy, Brian. I'm forgetting his name off the top of my head. He's such a good guy. All kind. There's a whole spectrum. Right. You can learn about it at Golden State if you want. Uh, but here's the deal. Caltech researcher last year goes and figures out. You remember the, you remember the, um, the book by Daniel Kahneman about thinking fast, thinking slow?

Alan: Yep.

Scott Frank: Think fast, think slow. So it's System one and System two, right? System one, our reptilian brain, System two, our prefrontal cortex, System two. That's the one that all of us as advisors think we're our clients are using. And we're using. We only use it 5% of the time. 95% of the time, we run the reptile brain. Okay, but here's the fascinating point. System two, frontal cortex runs at 10 bits per second. Hm. That's slower than the original Nintendo. How fast do you think System one runs?

Alan: Oh, gosh, no tell. I have no idea.

Scott Frank: Just guess.

Alan: Uh, a hundred.

Scott Frank: A hundred bits per second. Cool. And everyone else can make their guess too. The answer is a billion bits per second. It's 100 million times faster. The work that we're doing with kinder is we're getting advisors to help their clients use System one to their benefit.

Alan: So how are you so, I mean, so using System one to their benefit. Mhm. And System one is this the reptilian brain body.

Scott Frank: It's where all emotion happens. It's where we think that we operate by being these really smart people who are thinking all the time. But thinking is running a hundred million times slower than our other system. So like, you can't, it doesn't really compete. What it ends up doing in the end is it backs up the choices that our gut or our brain, our heart, wants to make.

Alan: So are you finding that clients are reaching out knowing that you have this process and they're looking for this type of process? Okay, no.

Scott Frank: What they show up for is the same reason everyone shows up to every other office. There's some pain point that makes them go, it's time my cash flow was off. You know, I have this big stock comp thing coming up and I don't know what to do. I don't want to make a mistake. Um, we actually get the core clients, um, we've had on more than one occasion their parents or grandparents come to us after the fact because we've done all of this work about who are the people. They see that effect in their lives and then they go like the sandwich generation goes like, I don't want to have to deal with the finances of my, my parents. Can you be in charge of their

Alan: stuff

Scott Frank: to like, where our business is literally yelling about at every like, big function? I'm just thinking of any custodial, uh, thing you go to, they're going to talk about the great wealth transfer that's coming.

Alan: Oh yeah.

Scott Frank: I'm like, dude, just go do great work for your clients and let them know you can work with their parents.

Alan: Well, I guess either way, you're positioned for the great wealth transfer. That may or may not happen, but,

Scott Frank: uh, well, then you're literally holding on to the wealth and you're already managing the wealth of the next generation. You're good.

Alan: So will you work with a client that comes in and says, hey, I have this issue. And yeah, that touchy feely stuff sounds great, but, like, not for me is that.

Scott Frank: But I meet them where they are because here's what I do. First of all, we never talk about it as touchy feely. All that we do at first, Alan, is I'm just like, hey, Alan, it's really nice to meet you. Um, what brings you here today and what are you going to do? You're going to list off all the financial stuff on your brain because you're talking to a financial professional, right? And then eventually I'll be like, ah, Alan, we, we help clients with all of those things all the time. You're in the right place. You know, one of the things that we realize is that money is just a tool. And so if we, if we think of it that way, um, you know, what are, what are the essential elements in your life for you to live a great life? Everyone wants to talk about themselves in their own life. It's very rare to have someone show up and be like, I don't want to talk about how I want my life to be. And if they push back on it a little bit, I'll be like, you know, the reason I ask, Alan, is because I would hate to put the ladder against the wrong wall and have you climb.

Alan: That's a good metaphor.

Scott Frank: We're building a plan for them to every finance is really all about helping clients create whatever version of freedom they want in their life. And everyone's answer is different. And you could have to, you could put me, the advisor, with what I just told you I have in revenue next to another advisor who's been in business the same amount of time with the same amount of revenue. And our plans are going to end up being different because we want different things. If you don't know what your client wants, how are you doing a good job for them?

Alan: So I am the client of an advisor, and sometimes I think I'm his worst client, um, because of my entrepreneurial, uh, addiction, if you will. Um, it sounds so simple to say, like, yeah, we need to know what a client wants, and then, uh, you know, we got to put the ladder against the right wall. But that is, like, unbelievably challenging. And again, it's this, like, constantly moving target. So how are you Helping clients. You know, it's easy to come up with an answer. The question is like, is it the real answer? Is it really what going to be the filter through which you make decisions like how do you help clients, uh, actually get there? Quick pause. Behind the Advisor isn't just about inspiring stories. It's about real support. So we're taking a moment to share a few gems from the Advisor's toolkit to help you grow, save time and make life a little easier. Stay tuned for some real life resources and then we'll be right back. Are you ready for a deeper connection with the stories and strategies shared on behind the Advisor? Subscribe now@joinxypn.com BTA and you will get first access to every new episode, plus bonus content that takes you behind the scenes of each episode delivered straight to your inbox. If you found that tool useful, hang tight. We've got more coming your way. We're pulling more tools from the Advisors toolkit to help you work smarter, connect deeper and save serious time. Stick around, there's good stuff ahead.

Scott Frank: I love, I love that because what you do is you help them paint a picture of them going there in the future, looking back on it, having done it. Because system one operates on emotion, right? Um, emotion equals energy in motion. You want people to move on stuff, get them excited about it. M. So once we give you paint the picture of where you want to go, then we're going to look at what could possibly get in your way. You'll know what things are possible and not possible. And then the real next step is, well, what's the next actionable step you can take to see if it's the right path for you, if it's a huge change you want to have in your life. Give you an example. Um, this, because it just came to fruition, worked with clients, um, at a, at a tech firm up in like, ah, Pacific Northwest area. Super nice couple. Kids are through college, paid off the house. They're to the point where like, they could just be all done if they want to be, but they also have this longing in their life to have a second home in Southern California so that they can go enjoy the sun when the Pacific Northwest is not so sunny, shall we say. Right. So that's a big change for them and it would, it would make it so that when you look at the numbers, they're going to have to work longer to achieve that. So what did we do first? We went and tested it. They went and rented a place in Southern California for a month to see like is this really the town you want to be in? Is it walkable? Like you envision it being walkable or is it just something that's in your head? Right. So you just help them look at what's the next actionable step and then people will go try and fail. Failing is not bad. It just means it's not for me. Well we didn't overly invest in it or they go and in this case they tried it, they loved it. They're closing on um, a house end of this month.

Alan: So I love that story because one of the things that I hear from advisors that you know when they first hear about registered life planner and that sort of thing is like, is it scalable? Like it's one thing for you to do this work, it's another thing for a firm to do this work. So how are you operationalizing this real financial planning, this life planning process that is pretty intensive, not just time wise but energy and emotion and it just requires a high level of empathy, uh, and care for your client. Like how are you operationalizing that so that you can grow the firm beyond yourself?

Scott Frank: Yeah. So um, that's actually why my goal next is to create a larger firm to prove that you can do it with full, with full uh, planning the way that we teach it. Right. Because the way that we teach it is essentially there's three meetings that happen up front that normally you would have two happen. For a normal advisor there'd be a prospective meeting, slash discover, you know, are you going to hire us meeting. Then there's a ah, get um to know us meeting and then you have planned delivery. Pardon me. We add a fourth one. So it's evok because there's knowledge and then there's execution on the back end. All that you're doing is adding an extra hour and a half to the onboarding of a client. What we've found is that clients actually execute on things which makes it way easier to deal with clients because you've done this.

Alan: So it's an investment of time up front that pays dividends later on.

Scott Frank: Absolutely. Because now they've, now you're not chasing them around about getting things done. Uh, now they've actually done them. Another thing that we're doing with our, in our own firm is it's from my old, my, my not old. I've just worked with her for a long time. My business coach, Elizabeth Jaton, she would always give the idea of remove the boulder. So look at the clients and what they need to do and ask yourself how do I remove the hardest part from this so that it actually gets done? So we now take custody of client 401ks and stock comp accounts, right? Like, we log in and do the work. Now we also bill on it, right? We bill on investable assets. We don't need it to be at Schwab to get paid on it. Um, we help clients manage their entire financial lives. We are an all or nothing firm, but that's how we do that. The next component is that we do a, uh, one meeting a year that's deep with. And there's myself and one of the other advisors in that meeting because we're a little diamond team, right? So we do one meeting that's deep for an hour and a half. And in that, we give ourselves a month to prepare for it, where we're asking clients for specific data ahead of time to make sure it's all clean and everything's dialed in. And then we go in and we go deep and we go deep on life planning first. The way we do that is with another little tool that we love called Goals for Life. Goals for Life is just you coming out of your planning work, Allan. You go look at man on this like, you know, for, like, creativity and work and family and health and, you know, whatever all the other things are that you care about across a time spectrum. What are the eight or ten cells that matter most to me? Well, now we know what those things are. That's where the rubber meets the road of life planning and financial planning. We renew that, um, and review it with you every year. So that's really where the two come together really deeply. Outside of that, it's just normal planning. But what we're most excited to start doing, we aren't doing it yet. So I don't want to say we are. We're starting to test it. We want to do asynchronous financial planning for the core components of planning throughout the year. So just imagine that, like, quarter two is investments. So you're going to get an email from Wilson, one of our advisors, who's just going to say, hey, Alan, we reviewed all of your accounts. Everything looks great. There's three little tweaks that we made. Here's what they are. If you want to learn more about it, here's this loom video of me walking you through that. So you have that. And then, hey, if you really want to reach out and talk to us about this, just schedule a time here, right? So now we're going to make it so that on an asynchronous basis for the client. They're going to get a quarterly touch point. They're always going to know what's happening. And then we just get to focus our time in meetings on the emotion. Because anyone who thinks money is not emotional really like, you know, do you know the Carl would always say it when he would go talk at like keynotes. Uh, he would always be like the thing about how the, the they would do like the man on the street quiz of will you tell me about your sex life or tell me about your money? And everyone's willing to share about their sex life. That's because money is so close to the test. We are so vulnerable. It's emotional. So learning how to have hold space and have conversations, that's the key. The thing about being, um, the thing about doing the work with clients is really about just you mentioned about emotional toll and all those things. It really doesn't carry an emotional toll for me. Mhm. Because what you're doing is you're learning how to just hold space for someone and reflect back to them what they're saying so they can feel their own feelings and process what matters to them and figure out what they want to do next. I'm not, I just need to be present with you and your emotions. I have to have done my own work. So that if you bring up totally making this up, you're like, I, uh, gotta spend more time with my kids. If I haven't been spending enough time with my kids, where do you think I go? Right into my own stuff. I'm not with you anymore. So it's really just about teaching advisors how to be fully present. That's, that's where the good stuff comes from.

Alan: It's really interesting. I didn't realize you were taking custody now. So does that in a way I guess allow you to do more of this work asynchronously, not be as dependent on the client to actually execute and all the follow up and all of that? Uh, and just make better use of the time that you do have together?

Scott Frank: Yes.

Alan: So what is involved for, for advisors who are thinking like, oh, what does it mean to have custody? Like is there a dollar figure or an amount of time that you would say it costs you on an annual basis to have custody and have the ability to do these things for your clients?

Scott Frank: So we've only been doing it for a year, so I can't speak too deeply to it yet. Um, we do get paid for the work that we do. Right. So we are Getting to charge on that, those assets. But there is a cost. The cost is really in the auditing process. Mm. So in the auditing process, we need to have an outside CPA firm audit us on our practices for the sec. And I don't know what the rules are for state levels, so please talk to your own person and even talk to your own person about SEC stuff, because I'm just giving you my poor interpretation of what we do. Um, but essentially what we do is we launch a surprise audit every year. And there's a price for the surprise audit through that firm. I can't remember if it's like five grand or ten grand. I don't remember off the top of my head what the cost is, but well worth it because it helps clients get where they want to go faster.

Alan: Sure.

Scott Frank: Um, what happens with that is they request information of us, of the work that we've done. They then choose a couple of. Of clients that they want to, um, look deeper at, and then they want to see us log into those client systems to see if we are saying what we. If what we said is true. Does that make sense?

Alan: Yeah. Audits are like, that are weird because. Or not weird, but you're. You're. They're trying to prove. Well, you're trying to prove you didn't do something.

Scott Frank: Right.

Alan: A lot easier to prove you did a thing versus no, no, we, we didn't do that even though we had the ability to. So it is an involved process. Is my.

Scott Frank: That's essentially what it is. And we have to do it every year now. But I, I will happily do it because the other big boulder that we're working on, um, is we're looking at taking more control of clients cash flows too. So just imagine that like you, sir, you become our client and we just say, like Alan, we help you manage all of your cash flows. So we're going to set up an extra, um, joint account for you at Schwab. And all of your income is now going to pour into that account, whether it's distributions from all the various businesses or your salaries or what have you. And we're just going to look through what do you guys need cash flow wise, to be pushed off to your bank. We'll make that happen. We'll set up the auto pays from this account to your mortgage and the other places. But you and I are going to figure out an if this, then that for where are we putting every extra dollar the moment it's above a waterline. And we do that because we want the client to have money there. But the thing we see, especially in stock comp planned probably for small business owners, could be for people who get bonuses. Money just hits their account and it goes nowhere until they talk to their advisor nine months later, six months later, whatever. And then do they actually remember to move it? Right. So what we want to do is make it so that it's an automated system where it's automatically just pushing cash to the proper places so that they get to achieve their goals faster.

Alan: And will that trigger custody or. No, because it's a, A Schwab account?

Scott Frank: No, because that's a, that's a Schwab account. We're not actually, um, we're not actually taking custody. A, A friend of mine and I are interested in doing, um, an online banking app. That would be custody, but that would be its own business doing custody. So that advisors wouldn't take custody and it would remove. Because we're going to have to have a client service associate would have a waterline for your account. Right. Where maybe we'd just be keeping. I'm making up a number, you know, 80 grand for your emergency fund there. So we're just going to keep all that in, you know, the US treasury money market. And they're going to go in on a monthly basis and see did it go above the line. And if it did, they're going to push it to the proper places.

Alan: So, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I mean, again, it seems to be this sort of continued process towards taking more of the implementation load off of 100%. Client.

Scott Frank: Clients don't pay. Clients don't pay us to go like, show me a beautiful financial plan. Clients pay us to remove problems and to solve problems and make them feel at ease, that they're on a path right. To whatever they want to get to.

Alan: So talk to me about how this sort of applies to your niche market. You said biotech, uh, bio, you know, biotech employees. Like, how did that come to be and how is it like, is this being developed these different services just because that, that's what that client base needs, or do you think it's broader than that?

Scott Frank: So it's just location for biotech because San Diego is a hub for biotech, as is Boston and kind of the, the. Is it called the triangle in South Carolina? In North Carolina.

Alan: Oh, the Research Triangle.

Scott Frank: The Research Triangle. It's like those are kind of. Oh, San Francisco as well. So. So like those are kind of the biggest biotech hubs. I think if I'm saying that Correctly but there's a ton of biotechs here. So we've just friends uh, who got started with us were in that space and we start working with them. We got to know stock comp really, really well um, and take care of it and there is a lot of complexity with that and how they handle it. Right. And they don't want to make a wrong choice. So that, that naturally lended itself well to um, to that space. Cash flow as a whole though most people having worked in this business really closely with clients looking at cash flow, most people have no idea how much money they spent. Mhm.

Alan: Yeah that's true.

Scott Frank: But if you get a sense of how much money someone spends, you can actually have a lot more clarity on when are they going to be financially free and the moment they want to go make a change. Like our clients did, you know that are choosing to buy the place in uh, in Southern California. We could show them how much longer is it going to take you to achieve financial freedom. Right. And that's just a tradeoff. But it's a trade off that's more known. I'm not going to say it's perfectly known because we, I would say we have a better understanding of their cash flow. I'm not going to say we know every penny of their cash flow. I don't want to know every penny of their cash flow.

Alan: So do you work with clients outside of that niche or if you work

Scott Frank: with a lot of retirees because they were kind of referring their, their cohort, their parents, some of their parents and then friends for friends. So like those are probably the two biggest areas. Um, and just leftover remnant of, of you know, growing and scaling along the way. We have some small business owners who had very unique circumstances as well. But you know I am a small business owner so that's cool. But as far as growing, um, as far as growing a niche that we're going to focus on, that's going to be the main focus for me is going to be the tech and biotech folk. Because you, um, Kendra Wright just did an amazing episode on Kitsis. You might know. You know him?

Alan: Oh, Kitsis.

Scott Frank: Have you ever met him?

Alan: Met him once or twice.

Scott Frank: That's what I thought. Um, she did an amazing job breaking down all of the things we need to do to really get marketing to work for us. And the bottoms kind of fell out of all of that right now too with AI so, so it's like, it's kind of an interesting space to be in but you can see like you have to get insanely targeted on who you're going to work with if you're going to get eyeballs on you in that space. So that's going to be our next focus for that particular demographic. Right now my goal 10 years from now is that we have three different channels working with retirees, small business owners, and comp executives with comp. Does that make sense?

Alan: It does. So I guess talk to me a little bit about your personal evolution from entrepreneurial solo advisor doing all the things to a business owner who is still also a financial planner. Because I think it's easy to talk about, you know, when you're solo and when you're big and have a huge team and you just sit in the corporate office and have meetings all day. Yeah. Uh, but you're, you're definitely in that in between and likely will be there for a while. So. Yeah, just that, that's the reality. So I guess talk to me just about your evolution. What, what are you finding you enjoy? What do you not enjoy? How are you making it work for you?

Scott Frank: Um, so. Well, just to start doing it on my own was great, but I knew really quickly I don't like working alone, so I knew that wasn't going to be me. Um, if you don't want to work alone, you have to price your services at a level that when you hire someone, you can make a living and they can make a living. Yeah, I think that's a common. Like my, my fees were back then when I was working by myself. 3, 700 per person. Now I think it's about 13,000 per family. Right. Um, that was just part of it. But the things that I enjoy doing, I enjoy teaching, I enjoy doing marketing, um, I enjoy working with the team I like feels like pulling teeth for me to sit down and deal with operations stuff and draw like policies and procedures. That's just not who I am as a human being. Um, the coolest thing about building a team though is you get to look at what do you love, what do you hate, what are you good at, what do you suck at, and the stuff that you hate that you suck at. Other than email, you can hire people to do. I guess you could even hire an admin to do email for you. Um, so that's been really cool. The thing that's been, um, the hardest for me is I had, I have to. I still am in the process of learning how to be a good manager. I'm fully an anti manager. I'm like, Allan, here's the role I need you to do. Um, I hear the tools that I have for you to go do it. Go get it done. If you need help, if you, uh, need anything from me, let me know. That's how I usually operate.

Alan: Yeah, that's my, that's my management style as well, which I'm told is not management.

Scott Frank: No, that's not management. That, that's like, it's not abdication quite, but it's pretty damn close. So. So now we're actually just this year. So we now have five employees. It's my, myself to two other advisors and then it's a full time client service associate and then we have a part time director of getting, um, poop emoji done. Getting done. Going back to Maddie's day. Um, uh, but so we're. Do we have that? And we just rolled out, uh, wife should say Jenna, listen to this. So we're just starting to roll out EOS for the team to have KPIs, to have check ins. You know, we had a loose skeleton on it, but we're really tightening it up to make sure that we're very much so on the page with what's going on. Like, one of the things that just came up for our, our team was that I have to deal with is, um, we all have to deal with. But when we were in our meeting, they're like, we don't really feel like we have a ton more capacity with the advisors. And I'm like, that was an oh shit moment for me because I'm like, we got to keep growing. If you guys want. In my head, I'm like, if we don't grow more, you guys don't make more money, you're not going to like that. Like, so we're doing a time study right now to figure out what's going on and how can we change that? Do we, you know, how can I give you guys better tools and resources?

Alan: So, so do you think you will hire or designate an existing team member for the integrator seat? So for folks not familiar with eos, generally there's a visionary and integrator. Um, when you're a small business, you are both. Eventually you, you want to be in one or the other. For now.

Scott Frank: For now, I'm going to be in both. Um, potentially. You know, a friend of mine and I are looking at, um, partnering this year. It'd be really fun if that happens. One of us would probably have to choose that role, um, over the other. So we'll have to. That's a conversation to be had, um, but yeah, it's, it's a. Ah, it. Neat M. I'm excited for the day I can afford to have a chief operations officer who just loves running stuff.

Alan: Well, that's what I think was. Has been. I guess part of my learning experience as a business owner is understanding and recognizing that other people truly love doing the things I don't enjoy doing. And there's a lot of things they're really good at I didn't even know you could do. And so when I watch uh, like our current integrators developing their team members, I'm like, what does that even mean? Like how do you develop someone? You know, and they're like multi year coaching through specific skill sets and building that confidence and uh, and that's just something I don't, I don't even know how to see it, recognize it. I wouldn't know the first thing about doing it.

Scott Frank: Yeah, you literally threw the bag of tools in the garage next to the project and we're like, go to it.

Alan: Enjoy.

Scott Frank: And that's me too. So that's, that's why learning this is such an interesting thing. And then to your point, like, I need to learn it to be okay at it now, to be better than I am today is probably the best way to think of it. But I look forward to the day I can hire someone who's spectacular at it.

Alan: Yeah, I mean my, my wife and I recently did sort of an exercise because you know, we're coming up on 12 years in business now, uh, here, here with XYPN and the phases of the business. I, I was sort of like mapping out the different phases that we've gone through. And the phases were completely defined by the existence of a good integrator or no integrator. Like the early days, pre integrator. Then we had one and then there was this big gap without one. Then we had the wrong one, then we hired the right one. And like each of those phases completely determined my quality of life, the quality of our marriage, the quality of me as a father, um, how much time I got to take off, like how fast we grew. All the things were like completely dependent on that. So that is, you know, it's a privilege to be at a position where we can now hire people who are really good at that role. But man, it is, it's hard to find them. But it is amazing how your life shifts it in the positive way when you do.

Scott Frank: Oh yeah, absolutely.

Alan: So integrator pro. Um, so I guess, uh, Scott, just as, as we're Sort of wrapping up. If you think back, you know, 10 years ago, 2016, like, what do you think is one belief, one thing that you have most change, Maybe an opinion or. Or. Or whatnot. That's most changed for you, that has evolved as. As you've grown.

Scott Frank: Um, that's so easy. For me, it was that I was the hero. So if you think about, like, you know, like, um, uh, Joseph Campbell, the hero's journey. Yeah. Yeah. So. So, like, you know, back then, I would have thought, like, man, I got, like, this cape on. I. I have a cfa, I have a cfp. Just come on in, Alan, and I'll solve your problems. Right? I'm a superhero. I got you. And the biggest change for me, and it took a while to figure it out, but the first aha. Was when I went through the, um, Evoke training in October of 2017 with a friend who's still a dear friend of mine. Um, and, uh, I realized going through that, I was like, oh, man, we're not the heroes. The clients are the heroes. M. We're just the guide. Like, we're. We're Yoda, right? They have to go battle. Luke Skywalker has to go figure out if he's going to go on the journey and go confront his dad and do the whole thing and fight him and all that stuff. But, like, I just get to be his guide and, like, help make sure he's set up for success. That's all I'm here to do. And, man, was that freeing because you. You stop thinking that it's about you, and you realize it's all about them. And then you realize that, yeah, I still need to be skilled with my CFA and CFP so that I can have the best tools in my backpack to help them. But ultimately, how far we go is fully dependent on them, not on me.

Alan: Yeah, that sounds like a small shift, but it really is not. Like, that is, like, a wholesale change and sort of approach to how you're working with clients. And some of what you mentioned earlier about, you know, uh, I. About taking. Taking on the emotion with a client and taking that home at night, and all of that is tied to your role in that relationship.

Scott Frank: I was literally just going to say that to you because that's. That's the. I think that might be why you felt that way when you said it at first. It's kind of like you feel like I have to help them figure out what's most important to them. And it's like, no, you don't. You just need to hold space for them to go as far as they want. You can't force anyone to do anything. Right. But you can hold space and help them process and figure out what they want to do next. And some people want to go real far, real fast. Some people figure out that they're already so blessed to live exactly the way they live and they don't want to change very much. Well, that's just as beautiful. Right? But that's helping them see equanimity and contentment. What's better than that?

Alan: Yeah, it's, it's definitely an amazing gift to be able to give your clients, uh, to, to guide them in that process to getting there.

Scott Frank: Mhm. Yep.

Alan: Well Scott, this has been a ton of fun. Thank you for coming back on the show and, and sharing your journey over the last 10 years. I hopefully uh, will have you on uh, before 10 more years. But I can't wait to hear how this sort of next evolution in the business and going uh, multi, multi branch, multi brand and, and all that.

Scott Frank: The thing is we start small, right? And then, and then once it, then you allow yourself to open the gate to the next project. I'm very concerned, very, very considerate of my own time and energy.

Alan: So yeah, absolutely.

Scott Frank: Hopefully that's where It'll be in 10 years. We'll see.

Alan: Well, thanks for hanging out with uh, us on behind the Advisor. Want more bonus content from this episode and future episodes? Subscribe to our email list@joinxypn.com BTA Remember, it's all about helping people live their great lives here at xypn. Catch you on the next episode.