THE ULTIMATE ADVISOR PODCAST

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EPISODE 50:

Transform Your Practice with Brian Heckert

In this episode of The Ultimate Advisor Podcast, Bryan sits down with special guest, Brian Heckert from FSM Wealth. Brian share’s the story of his firm’s transformational growth, as well as some of the unique strategies and processes that continue to play a crucial role in their differentiation, forward momentum and success. We talk about the importance of building a strong and reliable staff and having resources that you can depend on to keep things moving even when you’re not there.We also discuss the benefits of surrounding yourself with people that share similar values that will push and help you grow in the study group concept. So, push PLAY and join us as we delve into the many ways you can transform and upscale your business!

 


Brian Heckert - FSM Wealth

 

 

 

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Intro:

This is The Ultimate Advisor Podcast, the podcast for financial advisors who want to create a thriving, successful, and scalable practice. Each week we'll uncover the ways that you can improve your referrals, your team, your marketing, and your business operations, helping you to level up your advising practice, bring in more assets, and create the advising practice that you've dreamed of. You'll be joined by your hosts, Bryan Sweet, who has more than half a billion dollars in assets under management, Brittany Anderson, the driving force for advisors looking to hire, improve their operations, and company culture, and Draye Redford, who can help you systematize and automate your practices marketing to effortlessly attract new clients.
 

Intro:

What do you say? Let's jump into another amazing episode of The Ultimate Adviser Podcast.
 

Bryan Sweet:

Welcome to The Ultimate Adviser Podcast. I'm Bryan Sweet and with me today is Brian Heckert. Brian Heckert and I have known each other for probably the last 22 years as we've been in a study group together, and we'll talk a lot more about that, but I'm really excited to have Brian here today. He runs really an amazing practice and does some things that I think we can all learn from and hopefully he'll share some of his little tidbits of wisdom today. Welcome, Brian.

 

Brian Heckert:

Thanks, Brian. Always good to talk to you and glad we could get together today.

 

Bryan Sweet:

Yeah, thank you. Why don't we start out by having you tell us a little bit about yourself and your firm FSM Wealth?

 

Brian Heckert:

Well, Bryan, I started in this profession in 1985 at 21 years old, and we started off at that point in time as a firm that specialized in retirement plan administration. As a young man starting as an advisor, I learned the basics of how to approach large companies and work with their retirement plans, and that has served as the basis of what we do over the last 35 years. Over the last 10 years, we've seen the biggest transformation of the firm away from mostly retirement plans and some wealth management to a firm that is now more of a wealth management planning firm that does retirement plan administration.

 

Brian Heckert:

We've got locations now, physical locations in four states, San Jose, California, Lexington, Kentucky, Janesville, Wisconsin, Springfield, Illinois, and our home office is in Nashville, Illinois, a community of about 3,000 people.

 

Bryan Sweet:

You're probably the only guy I know, Brian, that has a smaller community than mine. That even makes what you do even more amazing. One of the things that I think is really pretty significant, there's a couple things actually that I'd like you to share with, is that over the last maybe five, six, maybe it's been longer, you've been president of and also served on various committees of an organization called the Million Dollar Round Table. That in and of itself has been an amazing accomplishment, but I would like you to talk a little bit because I know for a while there you were like out 180 hotel nights a year and at the same time you kept growing the firm.

 

Bryan Sweet:

I think, one, people would love to know a little bit more about how in the world you do that while you're gone so much, and then maybe this might tie in with that, but I know you and your firm and your other advisors have most of your meetings via Zoom. Maybe talk a little bit about why that works and why if you're not doing it, you might want to consider it.

 

Brian Heckert:

Well, it was an honor to be able to be selected to serve on the executive committee of the Million Dollar Round Table, which is the premier association of financial service professionals around the world. Over that period of time that I served in the organization, we grew membership from about 38,000 to about 68,000 internationally. It did take a lot of time in it, and not only physical time away from the office, but mental time away because there's budget issues, there's volunteer issues or staffing issues that were all part of the role that I played.

 

Brian Heckert:

But the most significant thing that I feel happened to our firm at that point in time is that we were able to take the focus away from a singular advisor or a solo practitioner and become a true ensemble type of practice in which we have multiple advisors and we have clients assigned not based upon the personality, but based upon the jobs that needed to be done for that client. In talking with advisors all around the world, the one biggest problem we seem to have is that we're very possessive about what we do and how we do it. When you're physically gone from the office, you're forced to rely on the expertise of other people in the firm to make sure that the job gets taken care. Over that six year period from 2011 to 2017, our firm just about doubled in size.

 

Brian Heckert:

With me being gone, the firm clientele changed. We were able to take in more money as roll overs, as investible assets, and most of that was because of a solid core partnership with Leo Barshefsky, who's a partner in the firm, but also with a great staff development approach in which I got out of their way so that they could do what they do best. The time away, we did use technology. We use DigiSign where we could. We used a lot of faxing, hard paper back, signing it in a hotel room and taking it down to the business center and faxing it back across the world. But more importantly, the clients whenever they needed to reach me, we set up phone calls. Precursor to Zoom, we had our own personal web meeting that we could access from anywhere in the world.

 

Brian Heckert:

But we took a client-centered approach and said, "If Brian isn't here, what do the clients want and how can we get the answer?" It's amazing how our clients responded positively and not only grew their own confidence in us, but they referred other people into the firm.

 

Bryan Sweet:

Yeah, I think you make such a great point that I think we sometimes our own worst enemies in that we don't give our staff the flexibility and the wings, if you will, to show what they can do. I think one of the things that, and kudos to you, is that you absolutely did and look at the results. I think one of the learning points from what you just said is get out of their way because you'll be amazed at how great they can be if you give them a chance.

 

Brian Heckert:

Exactly, exactly. The other thing, Bryan, that was a large factor in our growth has been our acquisition strategy. As of this week, we've completed our 14th acquisition. We've both bought practices and then we've turned around and sold practices back to the original advisor when their situation changed and they had a little bit longer view of what they wanted to do. But for anybody listening to this podcast, teaming up, merging or actually buying out other firms has been one of the key strengths to our growth pattern. Don't overlook the obvious in which there are people in your broker-dealer network, there are people in your community that are looking to transition their clients to great advisors and anybody listening to this would fit that mold.

 

Bryan Sweet:

Yeah. I not personally ever done an acquisition, but it has been remarkable how you've been able to just consistently do that. Is there any suggestions if somebody is thinking about it, but they haven't say taken that first step, is there anything that you would say has been really helpful to your success in doing these 14 different acquisitions?

 

Brian Heckert:

Well, first of all, make it known that you're open to that. A lot of advisors who are at the end of their career don't know where to turn. They may have seen you at a conference, they may have interacted with you in a local community, but they don't know that you're a good fit for their clients. Letting people know that you're actually interested in expansion and helping other people exit is the first step. Two, talk to your wholesalers, talk to your broker-dealer. Inside of these firms, there are people like them that retiring advisors are going to. If you're a retiring advisor, my advice is make your business sellable. Approach the people that you think could help you seek advice on it first, but also clean up your book of business to make sure that it's something that somebody would want to purchase.

 

Brian Heckert:

On both sides of that, making it known as the most important thing. With my speaking, I've been very vocal about it for the last 10 years about being an exit strategy for people to come to us. I've helped probably 30 firms either buy or sell that we didn't even participate in. But in helping them I was able to gain knowledge and advice on how I could better position myself and my offers to firms in the future.

 

Bryan Sweet:

I think you mentioned one time that because you do speak an awful lot and that you have communicated it, people have actually called you seeking out whether you'd like to maybe potentially purchase their firm. Isn't that correct?

 

Brian Heckert:

Yeah. We did an acquisition with an older advisor that for a lot of different reasons found himself one day without a broker-dealer relationship. The person that was buying his firm ran into some trouble and he had no successor anymore. That same day he called me based upon a couple of common people that knew us, knew we were a good option for them, and within a 15 minute phone call we went from never having really had a detailed conversation on anything to becoming partners. The industry reputation and the experience that I had in the industry and the profession helped solidify that and take it from a six month conversation to a 15 minute phone call.

 

Bryan Sweet:

Yeah, that's absolutely amazing. But I think what it tells us is is that if you want to play in that space, you need to just make sure people know that that's something you have an interest in. Don't keep it a secret. Would that be a good comment?

 

Brian Heckert:

That is an absolute good comment.

 

Bryan Sweet:

Yeah. One of the things that I'd also like you to just talk about is your use of Zoom. I think you've mentioned there's a couple of advisors in your office where literally 90 plus percent of their communication with clients is via Zoom meetings versus in person. Boy, the flexibility and the time savings I think has got to be immense. Can you maybe elaborate a little bit in how that works so well for you?

 

Brian Heckert:

Sure. As I said earlier, before we used Zoom, we had an internal video package through our telephone company. It tied into our phone service. It had a lot of the functionality of Zoom that was just a little bit more clunky. But what we found out during my travels was that people didn't care where I was physically. It just mattered where they wanted to go. The other thing that was an eye-opener to me was when we stopped focusing on the fact that it was a Zoom call and just phrased it as a client call. We send invites now and we minimize the fact that they're on some kind of new technology. We normalize it to say, "This is the way we do business," and get on with the business. The meetings, even though we're halfway across the world, are exactly the same.

 

Brian Heckert:

We use the exact same approach, whether they're sitting with us, we have dual cameras, if they come into our office, or if they're sitting at their living room table. The presentation, we use an eMoney platform for our planning. It runs exactly the same because all of our presentation material is done on screen, even if they came into the office. My 25 year old son, Brandon, lives in San Jose, California. My 30 year old son lives in Lexington, Kentucky. We have offices in and I have acquired firms around the Midwest. What we found was that once you get past the fact that you can't physically shake their hand, the meetings are identical. I think that's the biggest takeaway that I had as an older advisor watching the younger generations was how normal it was for them to make it work.

 

Brian Heckert:

Things like sending a fact finder prior to a meeting was industry standard 10 years ago where you physically either send them by PDF or you send them by mail and had the clients fill it out, send it back to you. I was amazed when I got back from one of my travels and my son and my younger partner were simply doing the fact finders live while they're sitting there. It was an eye-opener for me and one of the things that has really helped us embrace it even more is that, again, clients don't want take the extra time to fill out a fact finder. They don't necessarily want to take the extra time because of mobility issues to try and come into an office. We live in a very rural area. It's a three hour drive to anywhere of importance from where I live.

 

Brian Heckert:

Either taking us out of that driver's seat or taking our clients out of the need to come in makes the whole process easier for the client.

 

Bryan Sweet:

I think one of the amazing things that I just want to make sure I get across is with your 14 acquisitions, most of the people that are your clients that you got through the acquisitions have only been seen via the Zoom meetings.

 

Brian Heckert: 

That's correct.

 

Bryan Sweet:

Will that be a fair statement?

 

Brian Heckert:

That's an absolutely true statement.

 

Bryan Sweet:

Yeah. I just think we all... Especially if you've been around for a while like Brian and I, I think take that to heart because clients just want results. We don't necessarily have to have a physical presence, but if they can see you, it's almost like you're there. I think sometimes we scare ourselves too much and say, "Well, clients wouldn't like that." We don't use it anywhere close to the magnitude that you do, but I am finding exactly what you're saying. You've kind of given me the confidence to do more of these, so thank you for that.

 

Brian Heckert:

Bryan, I think it's important to realize the phone at one time was a new technology. We don't think anything about picking up the phone and doing business and closing the process over the phone, why should we think anything differently just because there's a video attached to it and it's on a laptop technology? It was new when people had to share a telephone and they had to watch their long distance call back in 1950. Now, it's the same thing. It's sharpening that process so that it's client convenient and it makes our job a lot easier because we can see so many more people and do a lot more in such a shorter period of time.

 

Bryan Sweet:

Yeah, that's such a great, great analogy and so true, by the way. Maybe we should chat a little bit too, Brian, I know you and I and the other three in our study group have been together for 22 years, and we've had some amazing success and some really great meetings over the years. I know we've been asked to speak and help form study groups, but maybe from your perspective, let's give the audience a little idea that if they're not currently in a study group, what have you found to be the benefits and would you encourage people to join one or belong to one?

 

Brian Heckert:

Oh, absolutely. I speak a lot about the benefits of study group all around the world. One of the biggest things that any advisor will run into trouble is when they feel they're the smartest person in the room. By nature, when we run successful practices, it's assumed we're the smartest person in the office or at least the one who has to make all of the right decisions. After doing that for a number of years, it can become almost endemic that you think you have only right answers. The beauty of a study group, a good study group, is that you're constantly challenged and you're always in the room with people that are much more brilliant than you are.

 

Brian Heckert:

That's where I've been very fortunate over the years with this study group is that I'm always challenged to do better, and we always walk away from these meetings knowing that no matter how good our process is, having somebody who does this professionally look at it will help make it better. Every decision we make from an employer standpoint can be done better by running it past another set of eyes and ears. The most important factor of a study group is when you're in a good one like we are, you have people who are your cheerleaders and not a competitor. In broker-dealer settings and in local settings, there's always somebody there that wants to do a little bit better.

 

Brian Heckert:

In our study group and in good study groups that I've seen and talked to over the years, it's always a communal effort to help everybody else do better first. That's what I think is the missing factor in a lot of successful solo practitioners is they don't have that daily challenge or that yearly challenged unfiltered and so direct in what other people are looking at your situation and how it can improve.

 

Bryan Sweet:

Yeah, I couldn't agree more. Matter of fact, we do take our study group pretty seriously and we do really encourage others. One of the things that our group did not too long ago is actually wrote a book on how to run an effective study groups. In the show notes, we'll include a link to that. If anybody would like more about how we run our study group or if you're interested in creating your own, it tells about our history, what we do, how it makes it unique, and certainly can reach out to us also to ask any questions down the road. But any other thoughts on the study group concept?

 

Brian Heckert:

No. Just take the concept seriously. I can't encourage it no matter what stage you're in, find people with similar values, but most importantly, find people who are givers and people will help you grow as you help them grow.

 

Bryan Sweet:

Yeah, absolutely. As I was thinking about our conversation, the other thing that I know that you do and we do the same and it's so helpful is you have kind of like a branded investment process or a financial planning process. Tell us a little bit about what you call yours and maybe just a little bit of about how you set that up.

Brian Heckert:

Our process, which we help our clients reach their goals, is called the CORE. It's consolidated organization and reporting engine. It's tied around the apple concept mainly because if you think about the core of an apple, the core of the apple is where the seeds for growth become. Everybody who wants an apple thinks about what they eat, but the core is what makes the apple tree grow and replicate. In ours, we use an eMoney money platform and we do all of our eMoney presentations virtually, whether they're sitting in the office or whether they're doing it through a Zoom meeting. The process before we'll even talk about investments starts with a definition and a diagnosis of what their goals and needs are. Then we help people think through the things that they may not be thinking.

 

Brian Heckert:

I know you do this well, Bryan, in which you help clients visualize things that they didn't know were even going to be an issue. We run everybody through that process. Whether they're a referral client, whether they're an existing client, we make sure that we have up to date data, we do the live data input, and then we quickly go to the decision center concept in which we help the clients visualize their retirement income. It's tough for people to visualize a number and what that number does. The beauty about this was nail home for me when one of my very successful clients, a CPA background, had a desire to have a vacation home. There was some conflict at home with the spouse because the spouse couldn't visualize them having enough money to do what they wanted to do.

 

Brian Heckert:

I got the phone call and he said, "Brian, would it be okay if we did one of those remote sessions where you could show my wife how this works?" Within a period of about 10 minutes, we were able to take somebody who was very visual, the spouse, and combine the desire of the husband who was very spreadsheet oriented, and it was amazing to hear on the other side and watch on it through the camera. It's like, now I get it. The CORE process that I think... We get tied up in the numbers. We get tied up in the spreadsheets. We get tied up in all of this stuff. When people just want to visualize a graph, is it going to work? What happens if you run the Monte Carlo process? They don't want to know about all the calculations. They just want to know if I retire today and the market goes down 25%, can I stay retired?

 

Brian Heckert:

If we can focus on the simplicity of the questions they're asking, I think it helps them feel more comfortable about the process and the technology. We all know what goes into the background, but the beauty is what they see in various small snapshots.

 

Bryan Sweet:

Yeah, totally agree. Wouldn't you agree... Your process is called CORE and ours is called The Dream Architect. But having a unique name to it is at least to me very positive because there's only one firm that can deliver the CORE process.

 

Brian Heckert:

Sure.

 

Bryan Sweet:

I think if you're trying to stand out in a crowd and you just do financial planning, you're like every other financial planner. One of the reasons for Brian's success is he doesn't have a financial planning process. He's got the CORE process. I thought that was always good, and I love how you delivered it. You have an amazing way of delivering that over Zoom.

 

Brian Heckert:

Well, I think the key lesson to think about is use the automobile example. Bryan, you drive a car. Your car maybe the same as mine, but each one of us have different adjustments that we've done to the inside of our car that we've customized to fit our needs. If we focus that and think about, well, everybody has... If they're successful advisers, they have some kind of planning engine, it maybe eMoney, whatever it is, is not as important as helping customize that. Just like when the client walks on a car lot and they want a specific car. Even though there's millions of those on the road, when they walk off the lot and drive that car off, it's their car and it's unique.

 

Brian Heckert:

That's where we as professionals have to help our clients realize that even though the platform and the technology can be used by anybody, it's how we use it and how we design it for them that makes it special.

 

Bryan Sweet:

Yeah, absolutely excellent. Thank you. Well, I can't believe how fast the time has gone here, but this has been amazing. Love the ideas and I'm sure lots of people have gotten some really great tidbits that they can take and implement immediately. Maybe one last question, Brian, and then I'll let you go, but thank you for being here today, if you could give one piece of advice to a successful or even an upcoming wealth advisor, do you have one thing or a couple things that you think, boy, if you're not doing this and you do these things, it's just amazingly helpful.

 

Brian Heckert:

Yeah. I don't know if it's one, but it's a few different ideas. The most important thing, the difference between big advisors and small advisors is the way they think, not in the way they do. If an advisor thinks small, they'll have a small mentality about their recommendations. They'll have a small idea of all of that they can do in life. They'll be limited by their region, their zip code, their area code, or their company portfolio. But the difference is the people who think big don't have a limitation. They don't have a zip code that will refine their practice or define their practice. Think big is the biggest thing I would recommend. Then surround yourself with amazing people. I've been very fortunate in my life to have surrounded myself with what I call balcony people.

 

Brian Heckert:

In this world, there are balcony people who pull you up or there are basement people who pull you down. Avoid the basement people like the plague because they want to level the field not by helping you, but by bringing you to their level, where balcony people always see room on the balcony for somebody else who's going to pull them up and make them feel better. Eliminate basement people in your life and surround yourself with balcony people, and I not considered my study group some of the best balcony people I know.

 

Bryan Sweet:

I don't know how I could have ended the podcast any better. That was just amazing thoughts and commentary and agree wholeheartedly. Brian, thanks again for being a guest on The Ultimate Advisor Podcast and I look forward to being back next week on the next episode. Thank you everyone.

 

Brian Heckert:

Thank you.

 

Brittany Anderson:

Hey, Brittany here. We hope you got a lot of value out of today's episode. To access the key takeaways, the show notes, and any deliverables, go to ultimateadvisorpodcast.com. While you're there, check out The Ultimate Advisor Mastermind if you want to learn ways to maximize your income, your impact, and your legacy through an automated practice, a self-managing team, and a killer culture, the clients can't stay away from. We look forward to seeing you back here in next week's episode.

ABOUT THE

PODCAST

The Ultimate Advisor Podcast was specifically created to help financial advisors unlock their ultimate potential by providing invaluable information and resources to improve your income, and the management, marketing and operations of your financial advising practice

The Ultimate Advisor podcast is a business podcast for financial advisors who are looking to grow their advising practices with greater ease and effectiveness. Ultimate Advisor was developed to help financial advisors master their marketing, sell their services with greater authority, generate repeat clients, and additional revenue in their business.

 

Each week, your hosts Draye Redfern, Bryan Sweet, and Brittany Anderson will share some of the closest guarded secrets from successful financial advising practices across the U.S.  

YOUR HOSTS:

DRAYE REDFERN

Draye is the founder of Redfern Media, a direct response marketing agency that helps professionals to improve their marketing, attract new clients, generate more referrals and consistently "WOW" their clients. 

BRYAN SWEET

Founder of Sweet Financial, CEO, Wealth Advisor, RJFS,  Creator of The Dream Architect™

Co-founder of Dare to Dream Enterprises

Creator of Elite Wealth Advisor Symposium

Author of 3 books – Dare to Dream: Design the Retirement You Can’t Wait to Wake Up To, Imagine. Act. Inspire. A Daily Journal and Give & Grow: Proven Strategies for Starting an Running and Effective Study Group

BRITTANY ANDERSON

Director of Operations at Sweet Financial, Office Manager, RJFS,  Co-founder of Dare to Dream Enterprises Author of two books – Imagine. Act. Inspire. A Daily Journal & Dare to Dream: Design the Retirement You Can’t Wait to Wake Up To

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