Podnos Interview

John Hello, everyone. We are here today speaking with Steven, Jacob and Rachel, Podnos of Wealth Care LLC. Steven is the principal and founder of Wealth Care. Steven's a man of many talents, an M.D. who practiced pulmonary and critical care medicine but had a passion for personal finance and after a long career led him to found Wealth Care and earned a CFP was also named to the official CFP board as an ambassador in 2014 and wrote a book on Preserving and Building Your Wealth, which is available on Amazon. Welcome, Stephen. Jacob and Rachel.

Steve Podnos Thank you.

John Great. We are really excited to have you here today. The whole group, we're here to talk about how to serve clients remotely, which I know is a thing that you do as part of your everyday business. But before we get going, Steven, I'd love it if you can start us off by talking a little bit about how you got started in the business. And what drives you and Jacob and Rachel also for you. What drives you all to serve clients? So, Steven, let's start with you. How did you get started in the business?

Steven After for about almost 20 years, practicing pulmonary and critical care medicine in private practice in east central Florida here. I became interested in what's called the hospitalist program. So I set up a program with my group and I went and got a business degree so that I could speak with the financial side of the hospital. And one day in my reading, I saw an article about fee only financial planning, which I'd never heard of and inquired with a local fee only planner. And he kind of told me what he did. And I said, it's it sounds a lot like being a doctor, but for money instead of health. And it was intriguing. So he encouraged me to take the CFP course to see if I would like all the different aspects of financial planning. So I did and took the test. And then I let people know in the community, friends, family, that I was interested in doing a little bit of financial planning and wealth management on the side, this is probably around 2002 or 2003. And you know, first it was my brother in law and then a close friend and then somebody on a ski trip. And it took me several years to realize I really enjoyed the work and the intellectual challenge at that point. I've been practicing medicine for at least 20 years and it was becoming more, I guess, written, not as interesting and challenging. And I made the transition pretty much the whole time fee only financial planning around 2008, which was an auspicious year, because of the Great Recession but, and I joined the Air Force Reserve to continue practicing medicine on a limited scale which I still do today. From about 2008 till about five or six years ago. I was practicing just by myself, kind of doing everything. I had no staff. So I did all the admin work. Everything. Dealt with clients. I built up Rachel, how many clients have we had when you joined me?

Rachel Yes, sorry. I had my background muted there. God, a lot less than we have now. Probably, 80, maybe?

Steven Okay. Sounds about right. So probably about 80 clients. I was fairly busy and there's probably a couple hundred million bucks of assets under management. At that point, Rachel had gone to law school and passed the bar and had moved to Washington, D.C., where she decided she didn't want to practice law and asked about joining me. So that was great. She was living in Washington, D.C. and wanted to stay there. So she worked for a firm fee only firm in Bethesda for a couple of years and then came on board with me. And that started a more intense, remote relationship with clients and with us. I had been dealing with remote clients because I pretty much on day one, the practice has grown directly through referrals. So I might have some clients here in central Florida, but they say, hey, my brother is in Arizona or Texas or in Washington state or wherever. Would you talk to them? And some of those people then became clients. So I would guess that at least a third of our entire practice, which is now about 160 families we'd never met. None of us. They live in other places and we just talk on the phone.

John So really referrals is what really drove the need to virtually serve it.

Steven So naturally, I correct 90 percent to the practice is via referrals, if not more. We don't advertise. If people find us from an article or a web search or something, they're much less likely to become a client. They're generally checking a bunch of other firms. But, you know, the referred clients are much more likely to be good, long standing clients. But we started working. I was working remotely with some families ready. And when Rachel came on board, we basically started the practice, which we continue today, which is all client meetings, when possible, have at least two CFPs on the phone. So there's two of us that know. So Rachel kind of came on board over the next few years and got to know most of the clients. There were a few legacy ones, especially older positions that, you know, that mostly just deal with me still. But as each new client came on board, they would deal with both Rachel and I. And it's an interesting thing for other firms with what I was told by a friend in the business was that clients would promote junior staff in the sense that, you know, if you would put junior staff out in front of the clients, helping them with questions and helping them with admin tasks and such, that a certain percentage of those those clients would then start to deal with the junior staff more and more and more taking some of the load off of me. And that's exactly what's been happening is very gratifying. And I think then that what leads to what we're seeing now is that clients are referring to the junior staff sometimes instead of me, which is great also, and to a desired outcome after Rachel had been with me a few years, our second daughter, who's not on the call. Lauren had been working in finance. She had a finance degree in college and a marketing degree. And she'd been working at various firms, Fidelity TIAA, a high tech financial planning startup. She was in Manhattan and she called up perhaps two years, two to three years ago and said she was now ready to join the family firm and wanted to stay in Manhattan. So we worked that out. And now she actually moved to Texas. She's in Austin and she's part of the firm. And she's actually been doing exactly the same thing as Rachel in the sense that as we get new clients, she becomes the second planner and I would anticipate she'll start to get referrals as well. And then this year, just last year, Jacob took the CFP course and passed it and became a full time employee of the firm. He's been working hard on operations and is learning the planning process. We anticipate him being able to use the CFP mark by the end of next year. Now, that's kind of the history.

John So a real family firm?

Steven All family, we have no other staff. We outsource, obviously, you know, including obviously Blueleaf. And we use a lot of online technology, though I think less than a lot of the other firms I talked to, we try to keep ourselves very efficient and only do deliverables that we think the clients value. And I think that if I could sum up what we think our clients ultimately value is, is they trust us and they know where we have their backs and we're doing all these things in their interest. And of course, the fee only has a lot to do with that being fiduciaries.

John And Steven, I think I heard you say about a third of your clients are fully remote that you've never met.

Steven Correct.

John And when you think about the service that you deliver, what proportion of the service that you deliver to clients is remote or virtual versus in an office somewhere?

Steven Well, depends where they live. You know, the ones that don't live close to me, for instance, are all remote, everything. It's gonna be e-mails, phone calls, text could be with, you know, one of the other staff could be with Rachel or Lauren or Jake, could be with me, could be with two of us at a time. So we have meetings. So a new client, a new client usually has a couple of meetings, which could be all on the phone if they don't live near one of us. Yes, they do live near us. They might come and meet with me in an hour, in our Florida office here and we'll sit down at the table and will, you know, do it. Information gathering. Determination of goals. Gather all the objective data. Account statements, insurance forms and everything to put together a full financial plan. And every client pretty much gets a written customized financial plan. In the beginning, and that plan has been updated to show years whenever there is substantial discussion, change and in light of an event, another meeting and then they get a new version of the plan. We don't use financial planning software. We use a word document that is customized for each family. Now we have a template that we can customize for the family several different ways. That's an interesting thing, is that all of us have used financial planning software at various times over our careers and none of us like it. And we all like you so far just doing what we do. So we will meet. I think I'm supposed to have a meeting later this week in person with the family, the smoko and Lauren is the second CFP in that family. And so she'll be on the phone during my meeting and be participating in a meeting with past demand service and follow.

John Great. Super helpful. When you think about conducting a fully virtual, you know, client meeting, maybe an onboarding or information gathering session or, you know, some sort of regular update, can you know, one of you describe how you typically organize that? What. What technologies do you use? And you know how that's going. And maybe if there are ways that you're thinking about improving.

Steven Rachel, why don't you answer that.

Rachel Yeah. So I was going to say one thing we have not been doing, obviously, is video conferencing. That is something that is very new to us. We've never really offered it to virtual relationship clients. Not sure why we've talked about it kind of here. And we just don't know. Never, never went ahead and did it. We were just we've always conducted almost all of our virtual client relationships just through email and phone. Very old, old fashioned and low tech in that way, although we're I'd say pretty high tech in almost every other way. This is just one thing that we haven't adapted. But I have noticed, especially in the last few months, it seems that more and more and more people are zooming and they're using video. And I actually think it's really cool. And I think going forward that we might start at least offering it as an option for our virtual relationships. Say, hey, how would you like to meet you on a zoom video or do you just want to have an old fashioned phone call? And I think if we do start offering Zoom video, we'll have to make sure that we have a nice corner of our home office setup, you know, looking like an appropriate background. Like, I'm like, oh, my God, this lighting is terrible. I don't know what I'm doing. So I think we would all need to figure out a nice set up for that. But I think going forward that this is a really something that we'll start to incorporate.

John It's great to hear. You know, we've lived on video, I'd say the past seven years at our company internally. It started internally. And so I mandated that all internal calls or video calls, part of it is because we're such a remote company. It was important to feel like you were generating some face to face dialog with colleagues and then that extended to customers and prospects and not all customers and prospects avail themselves of that. But many, many, many do. And I can certainly appreciate the trepidation around it. And in our case, we just sort of jumped in with both feet. We're doing maybe this will be helpful to you. We're going to do a series about remote work. And one of the pieces of that series is going to be that through the technical setup you weave, you can see I've got a setup that's pretty well lit backgrounds, not fantastic, but it's clean. And, you know, there's a high def camera here and a little better microphone. It's amazing because this is the entire setup that I've got, probably one hundred and fifty dollars on line. Maybe at the outside 200, and so it's easy to do so. We'd love to work with you on that. Coming off the technology, though, you would love to hear how you conduct an online client meeting, how you found maybe that's. It's a little different than conducting an in-person meeting. What you might do, even if you're using the phone, you know, it's certainly virtual. I'd love to hear how you prepare, how you prepare the client. You know, is the agenda any different than when you're in person? Maybe you could talk about that.

Steven You want me to talk or Rachel?

John Whoever would like too.

Steven I'll butt in here, I'll say that I think face to face meetings aren't the best in person. And go even further and say that from the very beginning, when we schedule a meeting, we give the clients a choice of where they want to meet. And it can be in their home, at their office, at a restaurant. They can come to our office and sometimes I bring them to my home. And those are all laid out. And most clients are delighted by that choice. And we end up meeting in their home. I won't go to their house. It's a great way to do it because you get to see how they live. They are usually at a high level of comfort in their own home. We not infrequently break out a bottle of wine during meetings if they're not in the morning and talk of food. And it's a very relaxed atmosphere. I would say a habit meeting like that runs around to adverse weather. So first one or a phone call and we'll start with it. If it's the first meeting, it's a lot of gold discovery. So I'll basically say you. But what made you want to talk to us? What are your goals? And you know, if you look back in 10 or 20 years and you were happy, you hired us and worked with us, what would it have accomplished for you? And then we'll ask you some other questions about how they feel about work and how they grow up and how they do money. What a discovery. Questions which I think surprises people. I think people are used to thinking of just going to talk about investments and money and how to do that and that that tends to be a very small part of the conversation. We will then start to discuss answers to questions they may have. Like, what can I say? What questions would you like to hear? Answer. Today, more will come up later. What in particular are you curious about or have anxiety about? And we'll talk about those things and then we'll start more on the objective part of the interview. And as an aside, what's very interesting is in medicine, when we eat, when we deal with a new patient or old patient, we do. It's called. So, no, that's a way, Pete. So it's subjective, objective assessment and plan. So the subjective survey, I was just talking about the same approach. And then the objective is, all right, let's look at your insurance patients. Let's look at having the title to your properties. Let's look at your investment statements. So let's look for estate planning documents. And then ultimately after that meeting, we do the assessment, which is the formal financial plan, and then the plan then is implemented. You know, we have to do sections depending on what the clients have the proclivity to do and motivation to do which part. And there are things that we think are very important and they're not doing it. We can nag them very effectively to get things done. And then we have an ongoing process. The follow up meeting and I would say our average meeting frequency is once a year. If it's even that often, we end up with a policy of complete accessibility. The email, phone or meeting, if they are local, we have no limits on any of that. And we find that we have a large cohort of clients that are just perfectly fine to hear from us. They get email and maybe talk to us who were on the phone or in person once a year. Rachel, have you ever felt differently about that?

Rachel No, I think that's a pretty good description of how we do things. I think something unique about us is that we don't really have set hours. Kind of like how you just alluded to. We talk to clients on the weekends after hours. You know, in the evenings. And a lot of times it's not scheduled in advance. Sometimes a client will just ring us at 7:00 p.m. on a Tuesday and we're happy to talk to them or 9:00 a.m. on a Sunday. And we're happy to talk to them. We don't have a lot of rigid scheduling or rules. We're pretty flexible. And I think that that's pretty unique. And I think we all think our clients appreciate that. And I think we all like it, too, since we're remote workers, we're not chained to our desk, you know, Monday to Friday, 9:00 to 6:00 or whatever. And. And so sometimes there is a Tuesday afternoon where there isn't work to do. And that's great. And I can't go run an errand or just relax. But Sunday morning, I have some work to do and I'll do it then. I think it's a great way to work with our clients.

John And when I heard that description, you know, I think I mean, it's clear you've thought long and hard about how to best service clients and that, you know, my my understanding of what I heard was that that was all in the context of that that meeting being face to face. I'm curious if you could describe if you know what the differences are, if any, when you wind up conducting those meetings virtually over a telephone?

Steven I would say there's not that much difference. You don't have the quality of being able to sit across on a couch in somebody's home and get that feel for them. But the questions and the discussions are very, very similar. Rachel, would you agree with that?

Rachel Yeah, I would. I would say. I mean, I don't. I do a lot for me because I'm in D.C. and we have a lot of clients in Florida. The percentage of relationships that are totally virtual for me is much higher than them for dad. But for me, I mean, I do know a lot of our clients personally, even from just personal relationships outside of work. Our Florida clients and I would say that for me, the quality of the relationship, there are virtual clients versus clients that I have met in person or know in person. It's in the scope of the financial planning relationship. I don't see a huge difference. Not for me. I don't feel that I have a better working relationship with clients who I've spoken with in person versus over the phone. Like one for me that I think my best or my favorite client relationship is the one I've never met in person. But it's a young client, you know, in my peer group who I speak with every single week on, you know, text, phone, email, just back and forth is so constant. And I feel very, very connected. That's just my two cents.

John So it sounds like there are some really there are some tradeoffs in building a relationship virtually versus in-person. But it sounds like through other technologies, maybe higher frequency. You feel, Rachel, like you can build a very strong relationship virtually even if you've never met the client. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Now, when you think about the way that you work in the transition from, you know, doing everything in face, face, face to virtually, you know, what would you say to other advisers? You're thinking about making a similar transition. What kinds of things should they do or think about at the outset?

Rachel Dad, you want to take this?

Steven Sure. So you're saying what would we advise? Other advisers who want to do more remote work.

John Yes, that's exactly right.

Steven Well, so I would tell them if it is possible with their lifestyle, I think that something Rachel alluded to is very valuable, that we are very flexible. And when we will talk to people, I probably had between five and 10 client calls this weekend, Saturday and Sunday. And that's normal. And I think it came out of the fact that I was a critical care physician for 20 years and I worked nights and weekends all the time and didn't bother me. And I know that a lot of our clients, you know, don't have time during the week from Monday to Friday, nine to five to meet or talk. And things come up. They're sitting around on Sunday and a question comes up and they know that we're very accessible. We do not get abuse at all. So we'll get no quick text. Got a minute to talk. Know question marks? Sure. If I'm not doing something right, then I'll just get on the phone. And I actually welcome the opportunity to connect because we lock in and we maybe never meet face to face or very rarely meet face to face. But here's an opportunity to connect, talk and catch up on maybe some other stuff besides the specific question or talk about it. There are some today. I've had a lot of talks about the code, that thing because of my medical background and with clients just kind of. But do you think what you are reading? What do you think? Back and forth. So sometimes just when I get an email during the day on email at night, if it's something that's not transferable and a few words with a definitive, I'll pick up the phone because again, it's an opportunity to touch that client in a way personally. And you check with them. And I think especially that it's just regular hours. It's highly, highly appreciated and received all the time. Thank you so much for talking to us on a Sunday or off on Tuesday night or whatever day such. You know, indic when they could do it. So I understand you. I'm in a peer group with eight other fee only planners and most of them don't want family time interrupted. They don't want to be bothered on weekends or at night. So it's very much a circumstance of, you know, both of your personal life. But as Rachel alluded to, we don't have regular office hours at all. None of this sits in an office all day Monday to Friday. We do whatever we want all day. And you know, the deal with. Rachel, Lauren and Jacob told them all that I just expect you to put in a roughly 40 hour work week every seven days that you're not on vacation and I don't care. I kept talking to clients or writing up staff or learning or reading or whatever, and they all kind of evolved to make that schedule look very well. And so that doesn't create a lot of afterhours time in working with clients or for clients.

John You know, it's fascinating. Well, what I'm hearing is that if you're willing to be flexible about how you think about your work and your life and maybe not think so rigidly about work life balance. But think about work life integration, that serving clients remotely is an opportunity to integrate your life better as an advisor. A. Well, that seems like a pretty good reason to start to think about doing this. And I'm curious, as you've done this. Are there any mistakes you've seen or were made, God forbid, that you did advise other firms to avoid as they get going on this journey?

Steven Well I'll pitch in. I think, again, personality has something to do with it. I know I'm thinking there's a couple of people in my peer group that just had a kind of very comfortable going into an office and working nine to five or eight to five or seven. The five or five days a week being offered might be off on the weekends and. That's their personality. And they really don't like the idea of being outside of those hours and they don't mind sitting in the office, whereas I would hate to sit in an office all day long. I'm just not. I like not having to do that. And I'm perfectly willing to trade off, you know, if I'm sitting outside reading and someone wants to call them late afternoon or evening, I'm not doing something else important. I'm happy to talk to them, you know? So it works very well with my personality. I'd hate to have to defer both to Rachel and Jake and see what they think about the lifestyle.

Jacob Hi, I think you definitely have to have, at least on the start for me, some sort of structure, whether or not you're gonna stick to it. And I I try to implement things like I'm not sure if you're familiar with Pomodoro Technique. Oh, you know, it's like, oh, okay. So yeah, I try to do things like that. And we used to start and then if something comes up and, you know, you have to go somewhere else, then so be it. But I try to be very structured, especially since I'm, you know, the newest member. And it really just kind of hit the ground running, even if, I mean, showering at 6:30 every day or anything. Right. Just try to kind of keep it very, very set in a schedule.

John And Jacob, just for our listeners of the Pomodoro technique is a technique of structuring blocks of work where you've got structured work time, but also structured break time. The most common break down is work for twenty five minutes, entirely focused, no distractions on the one thing you're intended to work on and then have a five minute break and then repeat. It's a great technique. We use it in and around Blueleaf and it's widely used, particularly in the engineering and development Soffer development community. So it's a great suggestion.

Rachel Yeah, I agree with Jake. I think structure is really important. I when I first started working from home in 2014, that was a mistake I made. I'd been used to going into an office and having set hours having someone my my direct supervisor sat next to me in the office and told me what to do all day long. And it was an adjustment for me. And I kind of had learned the hard way how to make working remote work for me. And I think, like Jake said, structure is the biggest thing for me. And I don't use the post pomodoro technique. But for me, it just lists I'm a big list person. I start every day by making a list work non-work and then prioritizing, you know, what's number one? What's number two, what's number three and making sure the list is as well prioritized. And for me, that's the key to be happy and productive and successful, working, working remotely. So and I think it's. Great. I think for me, I'm probably going to start a family soon, and I spend a lot of time thinking about how it will change things for me and how valuable it will be for me to be able to work from home and work remotely. As a parent, I think structure and prioritizing will become even more important, probably times 10 than it is now, and so I don't know. I think it's something I think a lot about and I think I just continued to hone that and learn each year on on what works even better than what I did the year before.

John So it sounds like working remotely and servicing clients virtually requires a bring your own structure approach.

Rachel Yeah, I think so. I don't think a cookie cutter approach would work for everybody.

John Well, I think that's all the time that we have. I'd like to say thank you to Stephen, Rachel and Jacob, Pornos of Wealth Care LLC for a fantastic wide ranging discussion about serving clients virtually and working remotely and really timely advice. And I appreciate it. And I'm sure our listeners will as well. So thank you very much.

Podnos Thank you, Bye bye.

John Thank you.