V1 - audio - joseph curry - the art of succession.txt English (US) 00:00:00.000 — 00:01:06.880 I just see business owners coming in and saying, yeah, my business is worth X and wanting to use that for retirement planning ahead of the exit. But when the reality is it's just not worth that. It might not even be sellable. In a lot of instances, people actually don't understand how the business fits into the bigger picture of their future retirement. Today's guest is Joseph Curry, a BSc graduate, CFP and CPA. He is the founder of Retirement Planning Simplified, where he helps people retire with confidence and unlock the full value of their businesses in the process. Joseph empowers business owners to turn years of hard work into lasting financial freedom. I think back then when I got that business, there was probably I might have had close to 300 households. Clients. Right now we're at about 90. My predecessor, that was a tough one for him. He thought, you know, we'd never be able to replace those clients, but from a revenue standpoint, we replaced it probably three times over since we started. So it's all worked out well. But I really think for us to do the best, we need to figure out what clients do we serve best, which is those people approaching retirement today. What do you want our listeners to really take away from our discussion? So I think one of the keys would be that I've been through succession planning, some of the good, some of the bad. 00:01:08.160 — 00:54:50.769 If you're like most of our listeners, you love the idea of running the show, but you're constantly second guessing yourself if you're ready or the person for the job. Are you missing a key skill? Are you aware of the things you need to know, like reading a financial statement or financing the operations of a business? We are here to solve that for you. Our new Free Ownership Readiness diagnostic will rank you from 1 to 4 on five foundational pillars of successful business ownership. It is the ultimate confidence builder that will tell you, yes, it is time to have that conversation or know these are the areas that you might need a little bit more time to develop. If you're interested in taking that assessment, you can find the link for that down in the description below. Welcome to the Art of succession podcast with Barrett Young. Join us as we explore the strategies, stories and insights that shape the journey of leadership transitions and in business success, no matter where you find yourself along the journey, this is the podcast where you'll find the tools to make it happen. My name is Barrett Young and this is the Art of succession podcast. My guest today is Joe Curry, a CFP and CPA up in Toronto with a private practice focused on exit and retirement planning for small business owners. He joined a financial planner about ten years ago to assist him towards his own succession plan, and now he has focused his firm on doing the same for small businesses. Joe, welcome to the Art of succession. Happy to be here. Thanks for having me. Yeah. My pleasure. I'm looking forward to this discussion. As two professionals in the space, just getting to geek out for a little bit, I want to hear from you, first of all, like what brings you to the art of succession today? What do you want our listeners to to really take away from our discussion? Sure. So I think probably one of the keys would be that I've been through succession planning in the past, seeing kind of some of the good, some of the bad, but seen it through successfully, I think is probably probably the key. Um, and then beyond that, though, let's say it's what I do now is, is helping business owners figure out what's next for them, whether it is a succession or whether it is an exit. So, you know, focusing on how you're creating value in a business. Okay. Awesome. So let's get into just like start of your career. What brought you to, you know, the CFP route? You know, talk to me just a little bit about that before we dive into your own succession plan journey. Yeah, sure. So I started in the business in 2011, but I always tell people I got my start during the.com crash. My dad's a financial planner, and I just remember during that time, him coming home from work one day and I could tell he was, you know, kind of, uh, beaming with a little bit of maybe he was looking proud or going to show the right word. But anyway, so I kind of asked him, hey, what's going on? And he's like, well, actually, you know, things are pretty crazy at work, but I had, uh, an elderly lady call me today, and she just wanted to tell me that he was the reason she could sleep at night because, you know, he'd been helping her through her retirement. So I thought, you know, that's pretty cool. I know I saw the, you know, my dad doing pretty well for himself. I had a lot of flexibility, worked really hard, worked a lot of hours. But also we had you never missed a hockey game or a baseball game or anything like that for my brother and I. So I thought, you know what, maybe that's a cool direction to go. So that's kind of what got me started in, uh, in the space of financial advising. So this is around 2000, 2001. Then everybody's freaking out. Sell everything. The stock market's not going to exist. And I assume then your dad was doing what good financial planners do and just say, wait it out and steady. We can make some strategic moves. But don't panic then. And that's what you saw reflected in his smile. Yeah, exactly. And I mean, obviously I wasn't sitting in those meetings, but I would imagine that's what he was doing. Clients were happy. They stuck around, um, through all of that and through 2008. So then when I started the business, I started with my dad's firm. While we worked together, I was building my own business within his business, I guess you could say. Um, so I did that for about five years. And at that point, really, it was before I had my CFP and it was it was more, probably more selling life insurance, uh, setting up a retirement accounts, but it was less around the planning side. It was really transactional kind of thing. Yeah, exactly. A lot more transactional type of thing. And then as we approached around probably 2015, I was getting more and more focused on planning. And it was at that point I was looking for the opportunity because like, my dad is still working now. So this is ten years later and he still got, I know, probably ten years left. I don't think he's going anywhere. Um, so I was looking at how do I kind of branch it and do my thing. And I thought maybe being a succession plan for another advisor who's been around for a while might be a good opportunity to learn from somebody else. Um, get a different mentor in there, but also get a good, you know, solid base of a business. So rather than starting right from the bottom, did your dad run his own office? I mean, has he been self-employed? Most of. Most of your life to in this has been self-employed. Pretty much since the time I was about three. He actually had a couple of. Butcher shops. And then he ended up, uh, he hurt his shoulder from carrying sides of beef around, and I had to figure something else out. And his financial advisor actually recruited him into being a financial advisor back in late 1996. He started in that business, and he was kind of, you know, your general practitioner. Everything from life insurance to retirement planning and investments to group benefits. But he actually, in the last 7 or 8 years, really kind of got out of the financial planning piece and really focused in on health insurance group benefits for companies, small businesses, that kind of thing. Yeah, I love to see just Family Legacy. You saw your dad doing that for 15 years before you start working with him or so, and you still wanted to get into it yourself. So that's always encouraging. When entrepreneurs seep, you know, come from parents who are entrepreneurs. I'm encouraged by that rather than the opposite. What was that conversation like with your dad about going out on your own? I mean, was what were their feelings hurt? Were there assumptions? What did that look like? Was he receptive to it and understood? Yeah, kind of a question I always get. It's usually more, uh, hey, what did you did I not get along or what was the issue? What happened? Um, but there was nothing like that for me. It was just looking for opportunity. And for him, it was. I mean, I think he would love for me to stay in the office, but I think he also thought it was a good opportunity as well. And so anyway, he was, you know, he was encouraging about it. There was no, uh, resentment, no trying to get me to rethink it. It was, you know, fully him saying, hey, this is a great opportunity. You know, if I was you and I had this opportunity to at your age, I'd be doing the same thing. Um, did you go looking for the financial planner? Did he find you? Was it like somebody you guys have been peers with locally? How did that how did that come about? Yeah. So basically, you know, I was meeting with different investment wholesalers or insurance wholesalers or, uh, you know, just different industry connections. I would just kind of put out the feeler like, hey, if you don't ever run into somebody in the local area who's looking for a successor, you know, I'd love to just get introduced and have a chat. So that's that's basically how that connection was made. It was just I think it was actually a wholesaler, uh, for a company we both used who just said, hey, you guys would be a good fit. You should, uh, you should meet up. And we we did meet up. This was in 2015, probably at the start. And then he was kind of open to it, but also kind of trying to figure out when he wanted to retire, what the plan was going to be. So we kind of fell out of touch until almost to 2016. And then another industry, me having the same conversations as another kind of industry connection, said, hey, you should talk to this guy. I'm like, oh yeah, actually, I have talked to that guy. And and they're like, well, I think he's being a little more serious now. So we reconnected. Okay, cool. I want to get into investment philosophy because, you know, taking over a personal practice from somebody who's built it. and those are all relationships that he's built over that time. And everything is definitely a very tough decision. And there's vetting and stuff that gets into that. But before I do. Um, you said you've been building like your own practice with it and your dad's practice. Did you bring clients with you? How did that exit end up working out? Yeah. So I switched broker dealers at the time, and I brought over clients with me that I had been building for the previous five years or whatever. So they came in with me. And then, you know, we had similar investment philosophies at that time, which is very different than what it is now. And so, you know, back then, I kind of thought I was already in this process of thinking like, there's got to be a better way to do this. And so back then it was actively managed mutual funds looking at, you know, track records, five star Morningstar funds, things like that. And anyway, so I was kind of on this journey of figuring out, you know, like, there's got to be a better way to do it. And so that led me down the path of evidence based investing. I got introduced to Dimensional Fund Advisors, and so I'm not sure. Are you familiar with Lambert? I'm not familiar with that one. No, but I do. I do know the shift that's been taking place in the financial planning world over the past ten, 15 years. Yeah. So it's basically that shift. And so we were looking more I was looking more at this evidence based philosophy, which in hindsight, to me, it seems crazy that we weren't already on that path, but it was kind of good timing for me to go down that path, because I came into this practice with a similar philosophy to my predecessor, but then I was able to kind of get him to shift his thinking while he was still there. So when we rolled out the new philosophy, the new direction, we're going with investments to clients. He was still there for meetings with those key clients to be able to. So it wasn't like, hey, Joe came in. Now everything changes. It's like, hey, Joe came in. He's bringing some good ideas. I think this is also a really good idea. We're going to go ahead and implement now. So we did all that information implementation before I ended up fully buying them out and he fully retired I gotcha okay. So you came in with a traditional philosophy that really matched up. But because there was that earn out period that overlapped, you were able to to show him. No, this is the direction I think we should take our currently our firm for the future. Exactly. You got it. Talk to the listeners just a little bit about that shift in philosophies or what that actually means evidence based versus chasing extra percentage points and and what you were talking about to actively manage. Yeah, sure. So I always tell people if you just like Google, Shiva Spivey index returns or scorecards, you can see there's so much evidence out there to show us that actively managed portfolios underperform markets almost all the time, right? If we go back 10 or 15 years, it's like 90% in the US. So what I mean by that is over the long. Over the long term, year to year, I mean even year to year, like. It's still a high percentage, not as high. But if we go back. So I think I was looking at it recently, uh, 15 years. So portfolio managers, uh, managing mutual funds that are selling, buying and selling large US stocks compared to the S&P 500. It was I think it was over 90% of them underperformed over the last 15 years. So anywho, so I'm up in Canada. You look in Canada relative to the Toronto Stock Exchange. It doesn't matter where you go. The results are almost identical everywhere. So really what that's saying is we can't guess the market and but it's not that's not bad news. It just means that markets work right. So the very basis for evidence based investing is just letting markets work for you. So focus on the things we can control right. So we can have exposure to the markets. We can diversify globally. So we don't necessarily want to be all us or all Canada in my case. So there's just some like key principles that we really can focus on that will give us a good investment experience if we can stick with it. And then really from there, we're just trying to manage the risk. Like how much exposure do we want to have to stocks versus some other safer asset class like bonds, for example. And then based on your situation, determining that mix is then going to allow us to, you know, the best chance of helping you reach your goals. So we're dimensional comes in is you've probably heard about like factor and investment philosophies. So there's like 307 different factors that have been identified as, I guess, factors that can increase your returns. Most of them either don't make sense. So for example, in years there's more sunspots I think is is it is the markets do better. Obviously you don't want to base your investment portfolio on that factor. It's astrology. Yeah, exactly. Um, but there's other ones. Uh, for example, more profitable companies, uh, perform better than less profitable companies over time. Right? So there are a few of these key factors that are backed by financial or sorry. Yeah, like investment or academic research that can be implemented in a way that isn't cost prohibitive. And so there's some of those we'll call them factors that we do tilt towards in our portfolios. But basically our philosophy is markets work diversify globally. Align the portfolio with your risk tolerance. And then if we can tilt to some of these factors, you get a little bit extra return over longer periods of time. Then we'll do that as well. So how long did that process take of courting this guy? I mean, you said he went silent on you for almost a, you know, six months, ten, eight months or so when you started that conversation again. I mean, before you guys signed, how much of it was talking shop, how much of it was meeting? Did he have a team or anything that you had to get vetted by or what's what's that look like? Yeah. So he had a couple staff. Uh, one was more responsible for the insurance. They were both admin, but more of the insurance admin, the other the more the investment in admin and kind of office manager that that type of thing. And then uh, so we started we pick things back out for the time, we pick things back up to the time that we had kind of a, a deal. I guess we had kind of went in a couple of stages. So one was we did some joint work together. He had some clients like, hey, go have some meetings of these clients, see how it goes. Um, and then anyway, that's what that went well. And we had just kind of like a, a joint work partnership type thing. So it wasn't any kind of ownership in the company. It was just we had some joint clients, I guess you could say. So we started that and we did that for probably about six months. And then we got a little more serious about figuring out how does this succession look and getting the framework in place for Price and Erno, all that kind of stuff. And so that took about a year, kind of probably the end of 2015, early 2016. And then we had that framework in place at the end of 2016, and then we had it all formally documented by about April 2017, probably when like everything was signed off on. But I had already moved in at the end of 2016 to the office and we were working together more as partners. Okay, I was thinking that year you were there as like an employee or under his umbrella working next to him, but you actually hadn't moved over there for that first year when you guys started working? No, I stayed in my office. I would just come over, meet with him at his office. Um, back then went to a lot more clients houses. So I was just some of these clients. I was just going to their house, which I actually don't do any of that anymore. But, um. Yeah. So it was it was a progression on how we worked together, but I didn't actually move into the office until we were both like, all right, we're going to make this happen because he he owned the building, the office. And there was another he had like a tenant in there who rented out the one office which would eventually come to be my office. Um, so we had to have a pretty good framework in place before he was going to ask that tenant to leave and for me to move in. Okay, that makes sense. Um, when you guys got the deal signed. What did that look like? I mean, was it an immediate equity? What was it? Gradual. Um, talk to me just a little bit about that process. Yeah, sure. So basically, and I don't know how much this relates to because I'm not a US advisor or accountant, but, uh, so basically what happened was we froze the value of the company. And so he took back these special shares or preferred shares at a fixed value based on what we agreed to value the company was when I came in. And then we both, uh, took agreed upon salaries based on our experience, tenure and all that kind of stuff. And then I subscribed to new common shares in the company. So now the growth of the company was going to me because at this point, he was not getting new clients. Right. He was just servicing what was there any growth coming in was all going to be me. So I subscribed to these new common shares and the way it worked, because he was getting his salary and I was getting my salary. So then the profits then actually got paid out as a dividend to my common shares. Because essentially the way that it worked is the expenses in our salaries took all the revenue that was coming in based on what it would look like. When I got there, it was going towards paying that. So anything extra coming in was growth that I was bringing into the firm. So that kicked back to me as a as a dividend, and then I would have to use that dividend to buy those special shares from him. You're the only one with profit preferred shares then at that point. So it all comes to you and you use those to buy the other ones. Exactly. Interesting. And then so basically what happened was we also part of the deal was once I bought 50% of those shares and the interest of being a minority shareholder, so I had to take care of a loan at that point, like a bank loan to purchase the remaining shares. So that's written into the agreement then. And it's as fast as you can make the first 50% happen, then 100% comes to you at that. Exactly. And we got a cap on it for five years. Nice incentive then too. Yeah. So it's good for me. I mean, the, you know, the more I could bring in. The better I could do, the quicker it could happen. And then. But also it was good. I mean, we talked a little bit off camera about this, but he had already had a couple of failed sessions and um, he was so he was ready to, to make it work. And so we had a cap on it that if I hadn't purchased 50% of the shares by five years, I would take out the loan at that point anyway to buy the remaining shares. Oh, so you were, like I almost said, roped into this, but you were committed to this either way, even if the company didn't grow. Yeah, necessarily. Okay. Yeah. And I mean, we had like buy, sell agreements and different clauses ways out or whatever if needed. But that was that was the the main framework. Okay. You said just under three years then uh, from the start of it then. So about 2020, uh, so it was 20th August. August 31st, 2019 is when I, when we fully purchased it. Yeah. Okay. Interesting. During this time, you're shifting the investment philosophy. I know 100% couldn't have been happy with that. Selling this new philosophy, probably. What's that like going through your head, coming in and buying a company and also transforming it and saying, what if I what if I break this company in the process of this transformation? Um, because you're on the hook for 100% of this buyout of the value that was already based on a traditional model, and now you're shifting things. Revenue could be going down. Just talk to me about those nerves. Yeah. So, I mean, like I said, I was lucky there was that earn out period for him to be there. And I had him onside with everything before I started implementing those changes. But yeah, I mean, you definitely, especially when you start talking to some of your bigger clients, there's a little bit of a, you know, what if they don't like this? But it went remarkably well, to be honest. We put together we did a lot of we put a lot of effort into how to present this to clients. And so we didn't just do it at a regular review meeting. We had specific meetings set up to go through like a full presentation on why, kind of here's what we're doing, here's what we want to do, why it's different, why we think it's better for you in the long run. So it was a really well thought out. We didn't wing it. We spent a lot of time on it and we got really good feedback. There was only, I'd say, less than 5% of clients that really had any hesitation. And we ended up getting all of them except for maybe two and I eventually those two that didn't come on board with it, I more or less asked them to go somewhere else because they didn't take any advice anyway, and I felt like I wasn't doing them any favors keeping them so they're no longer with us. But that was more me suggesting that maybe I'm not a good fit for them. Okay. That's great. So one on one investor education or also like webinars company, you know, um, customer base wide kind of education to too. Yeah, it's a good question. So back then it was all one on one. We brought them all in and did it one on one, except for once we implemented this, which would have been around the end of 2017. Uh, so January of 2018, we started doing like a January kind of a year in review slash education on the investment philosophy to keep it top of mind for people. And that was so that was a webinar we started doing back in 2018. And we still do it to this day every January. Um, and now but nowadays, I mean, we have we do for, I guess, a quarterly client webinars on education. We do an in-person client event. So, uh, we have a newsletter going out to our clients, uh, quarterly, which is like a kind of we'll call it the main newsletter. But then we also have, like the roundup, we put it every month and then we do timely issues. So, you know, when all the tariffs were announced initially in the market crash like right away we're creating the video. It's going to tell our clients. So at this point, all that stuff's kind of systematized. Back then it was just building on one piece at a time. And it all started with that just 1 to 1 education with the clients. I know there's got to be an age gap between you and your predecessor, and you've even just in that little bit there, talked about how your own marketing approach has has shifted in just the past, you know, eight years or so. Talk to me about resistance or that's not going to work with with my clients. I know these clients. Talk to me just a little bit about, you know, some of the times you guys would butt heads over that because I know that happens. Yeah. Yeah, sure. Of course. I mean, there's a lot of things building and building trust with somebody that you're trying to say. Trust me with these clients who've been with you for 20 and 30 years. Yeah. So, I mean, it was really there's lots of things, right? I mean, I had a million ideas. I'm coming to this new business. I'm young, I'm excited, ready to go. At the time, he's mid-sixties and he's on his way out. Um, not looking for a bunch of change. So really what? For me, it was figuring out, I mean, I put most of the ideas out there, but then it was like, okay, which of the ideas that I'm gonna, you know, stand on until the end? So the investment philosophy was one I really wanted to make that change. I thought it was right for the clients, and I wanted to do it while he was there so that they saw, you know, he got it and he supported that. So it wasn't just like, hey, this is what we're going to do now. It was, hey, here's a bunch of research I've been doing. I think we should go learn a little bit more about this. He went to a couple different conferences and seminars and stuff with us. Oh, good. So I dragged them along for that, that process. And so that was one where I put a lot into another one was like, so I think back then when I got that business, there was probably we might have had close to 300 households of clients. Right now we're at about 90 and we went down, I don't know, by the time when he left, I sold a ton of different client relationships or I guess, client list, you could say to other advisors. So I did a couple things, but like I brought that up to him like, hey, I get in the transactional world, it was, you know, and I did the same thing before, but take everything you can get. But I really think for us to do the best, we need to figure out what clients do we serve best, which is those people approaching retirement. And so, you know, I suggested we find a better home for a lot of the clients. And so that was something where he was kind of half on board. He had let me move a smaller chunk of those clients while he was still there. And then I did the rest in 2021. And that was just anyone who's not with basically within five years of retirement or already retired or a business owner, maybe within 5 or 10 years of retirement. Uh, anyone else just found a better home for them? And it just allows us to provide a way better service to our clients that's planning centered, advice centered as opposed to transactional. So that was a tough one for him. He thought, you know, we'd never be able to replace those clients. But from a, you know, a revenue standpoint. We've replaced it probably three times over since we started. So it's all worked out well, and there's just kind of those things. We're a small town, so like I mentioned, we're close to trial. We're not right in and we're in a small city, Peterborough, just outside Toronto. And so you know, his thought was well you know reputation. Yeah. Well there's reputation. Like what are they going to say uh, if we're doing this. And then there's also that, you know, there's only so many, you know, business owners, there's so many people who are ready for retirement. So who's kind of not so much in abundance. Like, I guess you could say. Right. Uh, so there was, you know, some worry on that, and he didn't want to see me run the business into the ground to him not get paid. So anyway. And there was other little things. And, you know, we would just have conversations pretty regular, like we were good, I think both pretty good at communicating and saying what we were thinking and just both deciding, like, you know, one, when do we want to push back and when was it worth, uh, yeah, putting a little more effort to to make things happen so nothing goes super smooth. But, you know, I also think I was pretty lucky that, uh, and I think that's where that kind of. You're working together, getting to know each other before we jumped in, uh, helped us both at least understand. At the end of the day, we both wanted what's right for the client, and that was the most important thing. And so I think him, knowing that I had their best interest in mind, made it a lot easier for him to be open to some of the ideas I had. Yeah. It's so interesting to see another profession whose journey kind of parallels the one that I'm going through over here, because that's that's been the challenge of retiring partners out of our firm here is we're getting rid of a lot like you, two thirds of a lot of the smaller transactional work. And they're like, but you've got an extra hour. Why wouldn't you do that tax return? And it's like, because the mind burden of dealing with 300 tax returns or situations or just family life, you know, versus 90 means that I can't spend all. I can't spend that extra hour on one of the one of the 90. So yeah, it is interesting to see that your profession is kind of going through the same the same thing. Um, especially like like I talked about earlier, I didn't even know about calling two thirds of your client list for their own good and benefit when you're on the hook for a purchase price and you're like, in theory and seeing other people do this, I know this has worked, but you've got it. That's a little bit of trust factor there for you. And and testing, which is what being an entrepreneur is about too. So yeah. Yeah. Talk to me about some of those indicators. Did you replace the income first and then reduce the capacity, or did you open up the capacity and then replace the income or both. So there was a probably a few few pieces to that. So off the top like the first kind of tranche we went through, I guess you could call it, it was like super transactional. There really wasn't much there. And like, he hadn't even seen a lot of these clients in a long time. Right. Much of the problem with having human clients is you can't service. I'm all right. So not even annually transaction like a tax return would be. It would be like they bought a life insurance policy from me seven years ago. They're still in the client. Yeah. And then maybe they had, like, $7,000 in a retirement account or something. Like. Right. So. So it was a it was more the servicing clients that weren't really paying us money in the first place. That was kind of the first tranche I also sold. I mentioned my dad group benefits is his specialty. So this advisor also had about about 70, 70 or 80,000 of revenue coming from group benefits, which to me was just kind of going outside of planning. Like that's wasn't part of what I was trying to do for clients. So I sold that portion of the business to my dad, actually, and that helped me pay off the majority of of that last 50% of what I had to pay off, or a good chunk of it anyway. And then from there I systematized the processes of the business systematize a lot more of like the planning specifically started providing a lot more value. I adjusted our fees so we had pretty low fees, which we weren't seeing clients a lot. It was okay, but when we're seeing clients and doing all the education, all the events and everything else that we do now, it's like it just wasn't really profitable. So I made that adjustment. And then when I made that adjustment, I then ended up actually switching broker dealers. And at the same time, all those clients that weren't a good fit for the services that we provide or weren't profitable at all. Those clients, I found another home for them. And so some of them was more or less referred away, but others that were a good fit for another advisor. Like, I sold a portion of those clients to that other advisor, which, you know, she's working with young families and which a lot of those were. So it was it was just a much better fit for her. It was a better fit for the clients. And then at this point, because I had added clients who had increased the fees, it allowed us to kind of do all of that without the business going downhill. Um, group benefits. That's interesting that you identified that as a section to sell to your dad, because with your target being business owners within 5 to 10 years, I know a lot of financial planners would say, oh, we should do the group benefits, the 401 plan, everything like that. So, um. Yeah. What what was it that said? No, there's higher value in not doing all his employees dealing with the business owners family and their plan for you? Yeah. So I'm just a big believer in, like, you can only be really good at so many different things. Yeah, we have parallel lives here, Joe. And so the so me selling that portion of the business over to my dad doesn't mean I can't help out in that area. It just means that's true. Hey still servicing that employer? Kind of. Yeah, I still look after the business owner and then I can talk to them about like, hey, here's some of the things you need to have in place to attract and retain a talent. This benefit program piece I'm actually going to refer you over. My dad happens to do that, and that's all he does now. So he's he's good at that. He's an expert in that area. So I can still, you know, I'm not giving that relationship away to refer that out, but I'm providing value there and getting them, you know, a good experience. And I have somebody else the same thing who's just the, like, the group retirement stuff and pensions. Um, so I have these I call them strategic alliances. Like, hey, look, these people are really good in this area. They're going to take care of that. But I'm helping you figure out, here's the things that you need. So and and here's the resource to get that in place. But just kind of staying in my lane of where I'm actually just know enough to be dangerous versus I actually am really good at this. Okay. So about August 2019. You now own the whole company. You'd only sold a small percentage of the business at that point, and started to shift the rest of them away over the past five years or so. Um, talk to me about how your practice had to shift during during Covid and what size were you guys at and what did that look like pre and then post and how you talked your your clients through that too. Just ushered your practice through that as a brand new business owner. Yeah. So at that time I mean when I looked back obviously it was a scary time, but I also feel like it was good for our business in the sense that we just had like from a technology standpoint, we're so much further ahead than we ever would have been. I also I mentioned I don't go to anyone's house anymore. So, I mean, we have 80 year olds who meet with me on zoom now and they're comfortable with it and it's all good. So it just allows us to be a lot more efficient from that standpoint. Um, allows us to meet with people more often than if we have to go drive two hours to see them. It's allowed us to now add, you know, clients across multiple provinces, across the country, which we never would have been able to do in the past. So it did a lot of really good things for us. And another big thing was it's where I really introduced all that education, because I just knew clients needed communication, like I needed to stay in touch with them and I can only do so many one on one meetings. So that's when I started doing this. Started as Astro anything. I was like, hey, things are scary. I have this time. Think of it like office hours. Just jump on. We're just going to answer questions. Um, so that's kind of how it started. And then as we go standing standing monthly webinar every other week, uh, it was basically monthly for most of 2020. Yeah. And then um, and then after we kind of got through that, through Covid, then that evolved into now like our quarterly virtual client events and education. I don't know if any of that stuff would have happened or be happening right now if we didn't do that. We also created our newsletter through all of that. So like all the proactive communication stuff we're doing now really came as a result of of Covid, I'd say where you're already remote. Um, or have you gone back to the office? Are you remote now? Still afterwards? What's that look like? You said your predecessor owned the building. Yeah. So we're actually still in the same building. Um, so in there right now, we have, uh, I have an associate advisor. Kate. I have another, I guess, client service rep who's also in the middle. Actually, what day is it today? So tomorrow he's writing his, uh, his last exam to to get licensed. So his plan is to eventually become an advisor. Uh, and my wife just joined, um, she's doing all of our marketing stuff now in the background. So, anyway, we can all fit in that office. It's still a good fit. Right now. I'm at home, though. Like, I like doing this stuff at home. Uh, when I'm just working on financial plans, things like that, I'm usually coming home to work on this stuff. It's just no distractions is a lot easier. And then I'm in the office when we're doing team meetings or we're seeing clients. Okay. Yeah. So we're both, uh, at Covid, we were virtual for a bit, so we were able to do that. Like, um, we lease all of our, all of our laptops are leased and we can work from anywhere on them. Like. And I just did that because I don't have to worry about security that way. I have someone who's a lot better at that stuff than me. Again, letting the expert be the expert so we can work in either place. But most of my team, they're almost always in the office. But the odd time they'll be like, hey, I got this thing going on, so I'm just gonna work from home today, which is fine as long as we're not seeing clients here, they don't need to be there. So we're a little bit of both. So your shift, I mean, we were 50% because we were deemed essential services. So we were still like mostly 50% in the office. But a lot of our teams started, um, where it used to be one day a week, work from home. They're now coming into the office one day a week since then or so, but I'm the opposite. I go to the office specifically when I'm recording episodes because I like to keep it all there. But for you guys, it was more of a shift of client expectations and client in person kind of stuff. Is the big shift. Then through that whole process? Yeah, it was. And then the other thing was, though, the staff I had at the time were not with me now, uh, who had come from a predecessor, they were very open to adapting and, and changing some of the things that we were trying to do. And I eventually actually had to let them both go, which was unfortunate. Now one of them was really focused. The insurance was really focused on the group benefit side. There really wasn't a lot of business there. She didn't want to shift into any other part of the business. So that was a big part of it there. And the other one was just I mean, she was in a lot of ways she was really great. But and on the same hand, there was like, we just couldn't move things forward. We were really stuck. And also, she had said she was going to be retiring for a number of years, and we hired to replace her, and she was supposed to mentor, but then she wasn't actually training and held on to everything and so ended up becoming messy. So that's a big warning I'd have for anyone who's a succession plan is to don't go in assuming that you need to get rid of people, but go in like understanding, and may become a reality at some point, and you want to make sure that's maybe taken into account in your agreements because that also upward Canada, the rules around severance are a lot more stringent than I think they are for you guys, so ended up costing me a lot of money. But in the long run they're doing fine. Business is doing better. Everything worked out, but that was a stressful period to get through for sure, which was kind of right after Covid. We did all that. Yeah. You also find out how many clients were loyal to the staff person, not necessarily to the advisor that you bought out in some cases. And we're just kind of tolerating the professional for the sake of a really awesome team member. So that's always a surprise to find out. Yeah. No, it's a good point. So one of the things we also did, I mean, I did so many joint meetings with my predecessor and what we did was where, you know, maybe the first six months, he was the one kind of putting everything out there like, hey, here's what we're doing, here's what's changed, whatever. And then it just became more or less me running the meetings. And he was just there. But so I think they felt good that he's there. He sees what I'm talking about, but I'm the one doing it all. So he must support what Joe's doing, or else he would say something. And so we were able to do that for a couple of years. So when he ended up stepping back, there was like no one saying, oh, you know, I wish Randy was here. Like some people miss Mister. And Ristorante was like my brother, so she was a good guy. They liked him, but I don't think they felt like they were missing out on advice or anything like that. Sure. Good hands. They're in good hands. Yeah. So. Okay, cool. I know you just said your wife has joined you and she's now doing the marketing thing, but I presume over the past five years, it's you doing the advising and doing the marketing at the same time. Yeah. And, I mean, I'm still driving the marketing like the, the direction face of the company kind of thing. Yeah, exactly. So really where she is. She's actually a labor and delivery nurse. Um, is her background. So she's just taking a step back from there and, uh, she's, uh, it's all coordination, right? So if I do a podcast, she's taking the podcast, getting it to her editors, reviewing the edits, uh, getting it on the social media, putting out show notes, adding it to the website. That's all the kind of stuff she's doing right now. Uh, show coordinator, if we're doing, you know, anything like this. I mean, as a business owner, a small business owner with a few team members, I'm still the one who's driving anything related to marketing as far as the direction or what type of content we're doing, all that kind of stuff. I know because we've talked a little bit about this already. You have two podcasts now, so that's been part of it. You've got these monthly webinars, you've got quarterly updates, you've got all of this kind of stuff that you've been adding. And then you've also shifted towards exit planning, specifically retirement and exit planning. I've finished the CPA designation, everything like that. I mean, where what's going through your mind driving all of these marketing efforts or you got are you outsourcing any of this stuff to get ideas or just I think this is the direction we should head, and we're going to test it out and see if it works. Talk to me a little bit about that. Yeah. So I mean, as far as the ideas go, it's really just for me doing research and reading and, you know, all that kind of stuff. I have, you know, there's other friends in the advisor community through different groups. I'm a part of that. I know have done well in some of these different areas, from YouTube to to podcasting. It's all So I got interested in in the first place. And then the big thing. Like one of our core values in our company is approachability, because we just find that our industry maybe is not always that approachable. And people, you know, I know how many times I've sat down with someone who's, you know, done really well for themselves and they said, I've just never reached out to an advisor because I just felt dumb, like, like I didn't know what I don't know, or someone was going to judge me and the way I was doing things. And so that comes back to the podcast like, hey, we want to, you know, find different ways for people to find us and come into the business when I'm the same. And, you know, like, why not make this like as a, as a business and more of our core values, like just put education out there and just make specifically retirement or exit planning more accessible to people coming from hopefully they, you know, people understand the credentials a little bit and know it's a source that could be trusted as opposed to a random TikTok video. So so that's kind of really the thinking behind it is just leading with education. So we just look at our entire process to someone who we're, you know, meeting with on a regular basis has been a client for five years. It really just starts with education and then strategy and advice, then to planning and implementation and then to review with education just as a continuation, like I talked about the different virtual education events we do in the newsletter, the podcast, all that kind of stuff. So education is just it's a really big piece of what we do. And then as far as you know, getting these things out to the world, that's where my wife comes in and that's where our editor comes in. So I'm not editing video or podcast. It's just none of this would happen. I got one video. I'm like, I can't be doing this on a Saturday during taxes. Yeah, exactly. It's not exactly right. So I lean heavily on the the taking, what I'm putting out there from that piece to the piece that gets posted somewhere, like that's where I'm not involved at all. I'm just kind of making sure that the end product looks like what I was expecting. And then it's all good. Yeah. Awesome. Talk to me about that. Um. Work or not work. I almost said work life balance. Talk to me about that work. Work balance. Like, how do you allocate your time as the primary advisor and the one that meets with the majority of the clients, the ones they expect to have that one on one time with, and then also the marketing duties and everything that you've got there. How did you find that balance? Running now two podcasts and doing all this stuff? Yeah, because I'm still working on it. Yeah, I know it's a really good question. I used to ask some other advisors who did this stuff before me, the same question, but I'm down. I haven't actually worked a Friday. Well, maybe 1 or 2 Fridays in the last two years, so it probably makes even more upset. Uh, but basically, I've learned from people before me some different strategies around time blocking and big chunks. And so, you know, one of the things we do with our clients is we call a our surge review periods, where we see all of our clients in the spring, and we see all of our clients in the fall, but we're doing like during those periods. There's no marketing, like nothing else is happening. I'm pretty like I'm blocking at the marketing before this period so that it runs through this period. It's already set up, right. So we see all of our clients. We find it actually works out well because we're seeing them around tax season, and then we're seeing them closer to year end in case we need to make some any kind of moves. So like we don't do a Roth conversion. But for example that might be something reason why we'd want to see some at the end of the year. So anyway, we're we're blocking those times. So we're still seeing all of our clients and they're actually getting more concentrated and they're getting a better experience from us because we're like, we're in client meeting mode when we're seeing our clients. Right. Are you having the same meeting over and over and over again in a week? And it's different switching cost. Exactly. So yeah, we're not bouncing back and forth. We're just focused. The whole team is in. It's kind of almost like an assembly line getting ready for all these meetings. Clients get a, you know, a good experience because we're on top of everything we need to be at that time. And then the other thing is we we used to like, meet clients by their birthday and six months after the birthday, but then if we missed them at their birthday because they were on vacation or something, then we're into the next month of clients. We didn't have this missing people, but now all of our clients know, like, hey, Joe's going to be calling. So, you know, we're almost to August. So, you know, Joe's going to be reaching out by the end of August to be booking their fall meeting. They just they know that. And so they're always, uh, have that expectation that we're going to be reaching out so they don't feel like they need to call on every little thing that they probably don't need to call or like it's not urgent. Right. So that also cuts down a lot of phone calls when they know when they're going to hear from us. And as I said, we do all that communication throughout the year as well, which again, is just more reason for clients to be able to just sit there and wait until their the review period. Now let me like we make it clear to clients like, hey, you don't have to wait, right? Like we're going to see you in the spring of the fall. But there's other reason, like life happens. We're going to see people outside of that. But basically we have one week a month outside of those periods where we see our clients outside an emergency. If there's an emergency of, you know, they very rarely happen where it's an actual emergency. I need to see you like this minute. But if that happens, like we're there. So there's usually a week, a month set aside to to see clients. And then that same week, plus another week outside of those search periods or when we're also seeing new clients and prospects and working on new financial plans, all that kind of stuff. So then that leaves all those other weeks in between where I'm working on, you know, planning for the business and doing the marketing and working with the team on training and all that kind of stuff. So it's really just everything's in like big chunks where we're just getting, you know, really into whatever it is for this week, this week, and then next week we're just going to be really into whatever the next thing is. That's awesome. Yeah. I love how organized you are with that. What is your staff do during the downtimes during your marketing blocks? Because it's obviously it's not like you say, well, I do marketing one day a week and Can production work three days a week? It's more like three months and then a month, three months and then a month. So what are they doing? Admin wise, during those off periods to prepare or to enact or whatever the case might be? Yeah, sure. So, uh, like I said, it's kind of usually works out every other week where either seeing clients or prospects. And so K, I mean, she's prepping and doing a lot of preliminary planning for all those meetings. So kind of that off week I'll be doing marketing stuff. She's doing some preliminary planning and putting things together for the appointments next week that she then hands off to me to, to go through and finalize, uh, and some of the clients. She's looking after herself like she has clients that just they're she's just the driver of the relationship. I'm not involved anymore, which has been really nice as well. Uh, and then there's this stuff coming up, right? Like, you know, we come out of one of those periods. So this spring, we come in and there's about, you know, 4 or 5 households where we need to meet with them separately to update their estate planning. And so we're setting those meetings up. And again, on those weeks we're seeing clients. But she's doing the heavy lifting to get all that stuff prepped. And I'm really more or less kind of looking over and, um, fine tuning, I guess you could say so. And then there's all the people, you know, people need money. Got to buy a new car or, you know, we just sold the business, so we're working with them on that. But she's also communicating when we're pulling the money in and getting the trades taken care of, all that kind of stuff. So and then Ben is he's administering a lot of that. So she's kind of more communicating with the clients. He's doing a lot of the administration on that piece. Uh, and then we always have projects. So we run on the entrepreneurial operating system. Us uh, right. So we have our rocks for the quarter on the projects, the processes and things we're trying to push forward. So on their downtime, then they're working on those bigger projects. Yeah, I'm laughing because we have our second meeting, Vision Building Day one this Friday. So, um, that was another thing that came out of us attending the Exit Planning Summit is I've known about iOS for Or 12 something years, but we've never actually implemented it, so, um, I'd love to see it. I can tell that that organization, the accountability, the rocks, all that kind of stuff has been really paying off for you guys. Yeah, I would just add to that point, like, I think it's really important to have that process because, you know, if I went back to the world before I had iOS, it was, you know, you always have the ideas like, oh, we should do this or we should do that. And then that just never happens. There's like a few things you push forward, but this way of having that clear accountability to the team like, hey, these are the things I'm getting down this quarter. These are the things you're getting done. Then we all know what the priority is. It's not oh, Joe just had an idea, which is what it was before. And now it's like a documented idea that we had made a plan to get done and and not just get done, but, like, follow through with it for the next six months to three years afterwards. Exactly, exactly. Yeah. I'm living in that world. Um, so you have two podcasts right now. Your first one, Uh, retirement planning simplified. Yeah. So it says the podcast is actually called Your Retirement Planning. Simplified. The YouTube channel is a retirement plan is simplified exactly how long that one been going. And I want to know, like what's the second one that you've just launched this year is business and exit Planning simplified? Yeah. So talk to me about the first podcast and why a second one and not like a series or, you know, two playlists within the same podcast. Sure. Yeah. So your retirement plan simplified was the original. It started about three and a half years ago. We got about 155 episodes, I think, right now. And then there's a bunch of other segments that have been built in there. So we're probably at like 280 if you went through the whole list and that is it's weekly, started biweekly, and then switched to weekly after about six months or so. I think it is. And so it's all about simplifying your retirement. So there's a lot of the the financial planning pieces that go around retirement. But we also do a lot of talk around purpose and in retirement and staying active. And are you getting social and all the other related things to retirement that are also important to make sure you have a fulfilling retirement? Because it's not all about the numbers. And then, I mean, just as part of what we do with retirement planning and also me being drawn to business owners because I love the business side of of what I do. Um, just naturally, you know, we have more business owner clients coming in as we're approaching retirement. And as I mentioned to you before, off camera, just more and more, I just see business owners coming in and saying, yeah, my business is worth X and wanting to use that for retirement planning ahead of the exit. Uh, but when the reality is it's just not worth that. It might not even be sellable in a lot of instances. Or there's like, you know, long burnouts that have to happen to make them, you know, actually get the price. Another working five years longer than they expected. So there's all these, these scenarios that come up over and over again where people actually don't understand what how the business fits into the bigger picture of their future retirement or work optional life. We will look at it. And so that's what really led me down this path to get my CPA designation Certified Exit Planning Advisor, which is I've had for a couple of years now, and start to go deeper with the business owner clients we have on, how can we actually, first of all, understand what your business is worth today? And then how do we start identifying those key drivers that are going to increase the value of your business and then, you know, just really enjoying that and knowing that content like the podcast is something I like doing. I thought, you know what? I think that there's there's probably some room for there's a lot of retirement podcasts, I think less on exit planning. Obviously there's some um, but yeah, I just thought, you know what, why not put some of this stuff out there to to help educate business owners and who knows, maybe attract some more in the process of doing so. Yeah, I'd love to find anybody who's like one of their first thoughts is I should do a podcast about this. Um, when we made the shift over to succession planning two years ago, I finally had that target market, like, this is who I'm talking to. And I specifically wanted to focus on stories like yours of succession plans, good and bad, because podcasts are all about founders and entrepreneurs, in my opinion. They all want to talk about the entrepreneur gritting through to build something from nothing. And I'm like, that's not the majority of small businesses. The small businesses are a one on one succession planning like you had that I've interviewed so much of over the past year that it's like there's a huge market for this. Just like you said, there's not a ton of podcasts on this and there's so much space. There can be a solo podcast, there can be interview podcasts, there can be two co-hosts, podcast. There's the retirement aspect, the taxes aspect. So much of this space that's in there because there's so much education needed, because business owners, we are delusional and we just think, all I got to do is work hard, keep my nose down, build this business, and then I'll be able to retire someday from it. Exactly. And you, you get shocked when you get actually near there and find out, know you've built a job and you don't have anything that somebody's going to buy. And that's heartbreaking. Yeah. To invest. Yeah. 30 years in and be like, I can't find anything to buy it. I'm just going to close it. Yeah. Especially business owners who have done well. Right. Because the income is high. It's not that there's not income. Income is great. Why wouldn't somebody want this? Because you're putting in 70 hours a week to get that income. And then when you like, want to if you want to replace that income when you're not working anymore. Like you have to sell your business for so much, but then, yeah, you're just selling a job which people aren't looking for. Yeah. Awesome. I mean, Joe, we go on for a whole nother episode. Talking shop. Um, is there anything before we get into the lightning round as we bring this to a close that you wanted to add that I haven't covered yet? No, I think you've, uh. You know, I think the succession, I think we've we've hit most of it. Um, the business exit planning podcast, really, as opposed to just being focused on retirement, that one's more focused on, um, you know, so far we've talked with some tax experts. We talked with, uh, or about just how do you understand what your business is worth and how you push the value forward. Understanding how the business fits into your retirement, thinking about where it is for us as Canada pension plans, TPP as opposed to Social Security. But how does that fit into the retirement plan, like piecing it back together with the business? So just to give people a bit of an idea of kind of the different things we're looking at on there. And to your point, earlier, exit planning sometimes is a is a scary word, but exit planning doesn't mean you have to sell. Exit planning might mean that, you know, maybe you have a successor who runs the business and you still are an owner in the business. Or maybe it's a succession to the next generation, or maybe it's a succession to other employees. Or maybe, like you said, with the, uh, the house. I love that you you know, you fix your house a lot because you want to sell it, but then you say, why do we want to sell this again? Right. So sometimes I love it again. This house is amazing. Yeah. You just do all the planning and you realize all of a sudden you have a business that you enjoy again and you want to keep with it. So it's really just about understanding how to create a business that someone else would want to buy. And then from there you have options of what happens with it. Whether you stay, you get again the successor or you exit. Yeah, I read an interesting book. I was heading home from Exit Planning Summit a couple of months ago, and I can't remember the author's name, but he was one of the presenters there and it was saying family business legacies, not necessarily this business being passed off to the next generation either, but it's selling this business to the next generation has the capital in order to acquire the business that they want to run. And I was like, I never even thought of it like a 00:54:51.970 — 01:04:42.150 family office type of approach to us. Because you always think family business means, no, you're going to run this restaurant because I ran this restaurant because grandma ran this restaurant. Um, but sometimes it's positioning the business for. No, we've made it attractive to somebody else. And now you've got, you know, $10 million to go do something with for your, for the next generation. Um, just interesting perspectives there. Exit planning means so much more than just private equity. Get out of here. I'm done. Never want to look. Never, never want to do another tax return in my life kind of thing. So. Yeah. Exactly. And I would say that's probably more the minority than the majority, right? Right. Just like founders, they get all the attention. Private equity gets all the attention. And the the main street deals are quiet and private and not big and bold. So awesome. Yeah. This has been great, Joe. Um, note not to put you on the spot here, but do you think you'll be coming to Exit Planning Summit next year or anytime in the future? Yeah, I'll eventually get there for sure. Uh, hopefully this coming year. But I would say at the very latest every the year after. But I'll, I'll now that you've told me how good it is, I'll probably try to get in there this year. Yeah, I bought my ticket for next year in Nashville. The day of the last day of it when they opened up registration. I don't know what team member I'm taking yet, but I'm going to be taking a team member and all of our team will become cheap as because yeah, I was really impressed by just the focus on value there. So plug for anybody listening. If you are interested in the exit planning designation, give it a give it a look. So awesome. Uh, can we jump into the lightning round? Let's do it. Okay. Um, coffee or tea? And how do you like it prepared? Uh, coffee, black pie or cake? And do you have a favorite kind? Uh, so that's a that's a really tough one. I would say that if I had to pick a favorite, it would be my mom makes this ice cream cake. That's pretty unreal. And I'm sure if we can call that cake. But, uh, if it's a cake. All right, so then there we go. We eat them in our office for birthdays. So it's a cake. So, uh, homemade ice cream cake, though I've never heard. I've never tried that before, so. Yeah, it's a big thing in our family. nice? We usually just get, like, the, uh, Carvel ice cream cake thing. Awesome. Um, do you have a favorite holiday and why? Uh, I'd say it's probably just Christmas. Like the whole holiday season around Christmas. I love getting out and doing the, you know, the holiday lunches and dinners and seeing friends and family. So that's always the favorite for me. Yes. Okay. Um, are you a morning person or a night person? And do you have a favorite routine? Yeah, I'm a morning person. I trained a morning person, probably my up to my early 20s, I wasn't, but now I'm up at, um, between 5 and 530 every morning. Typically the first thing I'll do is grab my coffee. I will either read, usually it'll be more audiobook, the audiobook or a podcast, maybe listening to the next session, something along these lines. And, uh, and then once I get through the coffee, I'll do a bit of a warm up. And about 50% of days I'll probably go for a run or maybe the gym, but probably I run any particular distance on the runs. Uh, it depends if I'm training to do any kind of a race or anything. Lately, a favorite race distance though. Well, half I've just. Yeah, yeah. But I'm like, I kind of knew the running well. I was more of a Jim hockey guy. And so I had some friends who were runners. Uh, so I did some Spartan races and then just did a half marathon then recently. So anyway, the routine is switching a bit more to the running stuff. I'm always switching mine up. I found I finally fell in love with running once I stopped doing five KS. Yeah, and once you get into a ten K or a half and you're just like, oh, cool. This is just like a just finish kind of thing. It's not a I hope I can get under 30 minutes or 25 minutes race anymore. It's just like, yeah, so we're in this for the long run. Yeah. It's nice to run without any specific goal to just to get out and go and clear your head. A bit of meditation there too, for me. Nice. Um, yeah. Some of my best thinking. Um, I don't run with headphones in usually just because I like the quiet rhythm and thinking and all that kind of stuff to typically. So, um, what's a common belief among entrepreneurs that you would want to challenge? I think we already talked about this, but I'll come back to the idea that just because your business makes money doesn't mean it's worth anything to anyone else. I think people need to understand what the difference is between a business and a job. It's hard to value the business on an ongoing basis where it's really easy to value. Put a value on, oh, I know how much cash it brought in this month kind of thing. So exactly what is one thing that you would want your successor to remember you for? I think it's really about going from a transactional business to an advice centered business that you modeled that or that you're always looking for. No. We need is this a transactional relationship or are we pushing deeper on this? Yeah. To the point where we don't like, you know, someone came in and wanted to buy a giant life insurance policy, like, we wouldn't even take it on. Uh, it's everything is so we so our kind of our process is we do a strategy session. We'll actually pay for a strategy session. We charge them, but then we give them as much advice as we can in an hour. If they like the advice, we think we can help them long term. Then we'll go to the next steps and get into a mood and investments and things like that. But then that is really, you know, a multi-step, comprehensive planning process that drives everything that we're doing from implementation, like from an, yeah, a recommendation and implementation piece, as opposed to in the past, you know, pre joining the business I'm in with now that kind of stuff. It was more someone's looking for life insurance okay. Let's go sell some life insurance. Or someone thinks they need a retirement account okay. This goes out with a retirement account. Of course we're trying to do that. Always trying to do that in a way that fits their needs. But you know, I think it's it's still not ideal looking at everything in a silo like that. I think you just need to step back and try to figure out what are we solving for based on this client's, you know, goals, unique situation values, all that kind of stuff, and then coming forward with a plan and then implementing products, if that's what makes sense. Yeah. So it's like getting them all out the door was the first phase, but now not letting them in the door so that somebody else has to do this 510 years from now is kind of second phase there. Exactly. But, you know, going against that client, that approach of we'll just upsell them later. No, let's take let's do the work. Make sure the upselling is there now from the very beginning before we even bring them in. So yeah, we actually just had a potential client come in. There would have been a great client from a, you know, about to retire high net worth took a lot of the right boxes for us. But they said, hey, we just want to dip our toes in here. We've been with our other guy for a long time. We like what you're talking about. So we just want you to take this one account and do all the planning. And so, you know, I put some specific guardrails around that. I said, okay, you know, we can start, but basically we have one year to like be the advisor doing all the planning and looking after this for you. Or we just don't think it's a good fit because it's hard to get advice from multiple people and, you know, get the best outcomes. So anyway, they didn't love that we weren't going to be that, you know, just transactional and do it as they wanted. So they didn't before. But you know that's okay because we don't want to again get these kind of partial transactional relationships in the business. Yeah. Awesome. Love it. Um, where are you finding creativity right now? Joe, I think it's from the podcast. Uh, we're doing more YouTube now, so I guess I'm getting creative. And, you know, how are we putting the podcast together? How am I thinking about that? So it makes sense for my video standpoint. But the biggest thing is just, uh, you know, the last few months, getting ready to launch business next to Planning Simplified, which launched on July 1st. So we've got a few episodes out there now, but there was a lot going into, you know, what do I really want to accomplish with the show? How are we going to present it? What's kind of like the brand of it? So, uh, I've had a lot of fun with that. Yeah, it's been good. Yeah, awesome. It's definitely a font of ideas for me, too. I've always got something new. I'm like, we should test this. I actually broke my podcast into six month seasons for that specific purpose of. So I launched last July 1st. Launched season two January 1st. Launch season three, July 1st this year and its. I'm going to test this for the next season, see if it works and then adjust for the next season. And that's worked really well for me because if it doesn't work, then I could just say, well, no, season two, that changed and work. We're going to go back with season three. So awesome. Love it. What do you have coming up in the next year? So this got you really excited. Well, I mentioned my wife just joined, so I'm kind of excited about that. It's been nice, a good start. We haven't any other too long and a lot of people warmed us, but so far so good for giving us something else to connect on. And so I'm actually pretty excited to see where that goes. We also have another kind of partial transaction we're going to be doing, where we're buying a chunk of clients from another advisor, and we were able to kind of go in and specifically find those clients that fit are, you know, close to or in retirement or business owner profile. So I'm excited about bringing that on. Also, a little bit of stress because we're going to be maxing capacity on board like we're set up good to to take care of all those clients. But we're it'll I mean obviously there'll be a lot to bring them all in. And then it goes with setting up a new client account and doing that initial planning and everything. Nice. Well, it sounds like we just set up our second episode together and maybe a year, a year and a half or so. So when you're ready to talk about it, I would love to have you back on. This has been great. Sounds great. All right, I appreciate it. Thanks for having me on. Where can people find out more about you, Joe? My LinkedIn. Just, uh, Joseph Currie in Canada might be the differentiator. Their retirement plan is simplified. Is all our retirement planning stuff. And if you just want the business stuff, business and exit planning, simplify it as the podcast. But also if you search that, you'll find it on YouTube. Awesome. Yep. Those will all be in the show notes. Um, yeah. So I just want to thank you for, uh, for connecting coming on the Art of succession. This has been fantastic. Awesome. Appreciate it. Brett.