Hi, everyone. Welcome to What Works. This is a show for consortium advisors
that taps into over 1,000 years of experience shared by our consortium
advisors.

I’m your host, Don Patrick, and I’m here to guide the conversation with
guest advisors and lift the hood on what works for them in business and
life. It’s all about learning and growing.

So let’s go.

Don Patrick: Hello everybody and welcome to episode number 15 of IFG’s
podcast, What Works. Our special guest today is Cindy Skaggs, Integrated
Financial Group in Atlanta, Georgia. Welcome, Cindy.

Cindy Skaggs: Thanks, Don. Glad to be here.

Don Patrick: Yeah. I’m looking forward to this. There’s so much to cover,
but first, let’s just learn a little bit about you and your family and give
us a little background there.

Cindy Skaggs: So I’m a North Georgia girl, have a wonderful husband that
I’ve been married to for 37 years. I have two daughters, one of them, a lot
of people in the consortium know, Carmen. Chuck, who is my first child, and
her little sister is a couple of years younger. Her name is Kelly and she
lives in Copenhagen. She’s an architect.

Don Patrick: She’s been there quite sometime now, hasn’t she?

Cindy Skaggs: Yeah. She moved there in 2019 to do an internship with this
architectural firm and they hired her. And I don’t think she’s ever coming
home. Except for Christmas, she does make it home for Christmas, which is
wonderful. And she gives us a reason to go to Europe and see her. She likes
to travel. So she meets us in different places that we’ve been so.

Don Patrick: That’s great. That’s very unique. So there is something else
very unique about you, unless it’s something, I don’t want to give away if
this is the answer to “tell us something others don’t know about yourself,”
you went to two different colleges.

Cindy Skaggs: Oh yeah, I did.

Don Patrick: You started off as a bulldog.

Cindy Skaggs: I started off as a roaring bulldog. Didn’t have any clothes
that weren’t black and red, but after partying for about four quarters, I
decided that I was ready to get serious and moved to Atlanta and transferred
to Georgia Tech so.

Don Patrick: And that’s where we met Alan, right?

Cindy Skaggs: That’s where I met my husband and graduated in 1982. Long time
ago.

Don Patrick: Amazing.

Cindy Skaggs: First career is in the computer industry and then stayed home
with kids and Went back and got my master’s for this career.

Don Patrick: Georgia State. Is that correct?

Cindy Skaggs: Hmmm. The master’s in personal financial planning, which they
don’t have anymore, but it was a great foundation for me to get started in
this business.

Don Patrick: And how did you discover this business’s profession?

Cindy Skaggs: Well, I don’t know if you know this, but I actually came as a
prospect to Perarin Associates. They were having a Christmas event with the
Santa Claus. And so I brought my kids and tried to understand what Perarin
Associates did. And I can’t tell you who the advisor was who contacted me
and invited me, but they weren’t happy when I wasn’t interested in working
with them. I really don’t know who it was, but I didn’t get a good
impression, to be honest with you.

Don Patrick: Obviously.

Cindy Skaggs: I was looking for help and I didn’t have a lot of money. And
so, they weren’t interested in me anymore than I was interested in them. It
just made me that much more serious about there’s people out there that do
need financial planning help that aren’t millionaires yet that deserve some
assistance getting started.

So that was, that had spurred my interest. I had actually opened a couple of
mutual funds and lost money in them in a whole three months time. And I just
couldn’t understand–what I thought you invested in things grew. But
unfortunately, that was to be our down payment on our next house and it
takes a little longer for investments to work.

Don Patrick: Yes, got to use a miracle, so what would you do in the computer
business?

Cindy Skaggs: I was a national account rep for Burroughs, which turned into
Unisys. So I had what they considered national accounts here in Atlanta,
which was Coca-Cola, Southern Company, Bell, South Central Bell, and
Southern Bell. It was before they broke up, and AT&T.

So I called on very large companies, trying to sell them very large
computers and it was a very stressful job.

Don Patrick: And a very long sales cycle.

Cindy Skaggs: Uh-huh. Yes. When Burroughs merged with Sperry to become
Unisys, Sperry had a lot of the, especially the Bell South business. So
eventually my position as a national account rep was turned into a more
normal salesperson in a territory.

And I wasn’t really happy with that, but I hung on and found a little
software company. I went and sold software, accounting software for them for
about a year and a half. I was pregnant with Carmen and they had never had
anyone pregnant before. That’s a long story. But anyway, that was the kind
of the end.

After Carmen was born, I didn’t go back to work because they had not treated
me well during my pregnancy and I was wanting to stay home with her.

Don Patrick: Yeah, so you had sales experience and the sales training, which
is a big deal. So now, you went to this event, you bought a couple of mutual
funds and what were the next steps in terms of finding your way into the
financial planning profession?

Cindy Skaggs: Well, it was hard because I didn’t know what a financial
planner was and I didn’t know what you needed to be a financial planner. So
I worked at H&R Block for a couple of seasons. I went back and got my
master’s and that gave me the book science, but then I was determined I
wasn’t going to–I knew once I started working, I wouldn’t have time to do
the CFP.

So I wanted to finish past the CFP before I started working. And then
through my interviewing, I sent resumes to the top 25 firms and talk to a
lot of people and they wanted me to intern with them while I was getting my
CFP and Don, you know me, I’m focused and I can’t with little ones at home,
I needed to do one thing at a time.

So I passed the exam before I started working. And then the first firm that
I worked with was not Perarin Associates. It was Creative Financial Group,
which was across the street, basically, behind the Ravinia. And I was
working there when September 11th happened and they made some changes as a
result after that and the advisor that I was assisting was moved to
Birmingham and so they kept me on until I found another job, which was here
with Connie, Hank, and Al.

So they paid me a salary for a year to write their financial plans before I
opened my own practice and that leads us to Dave Ramsey.

Don Patrick: Yes, which turned out to be a huge success for you. Took time.
But I will confess, I don’t know if you remember this. When you told me you
were going to start doing the Dave Ramsey program. And I told you you
wouldn’t make it, right? And I was totally wrong.

Cindy Skaggs: And you and Alan compared notes at every retreat thinking,
everyone’s thinking I was crazy because I was working my tail off trying to
follow up on all these opportunities. But Dave Ramsey worked a lot better
than the other couple of referral sources I tried with B&I and doing the
events, dinners. So, I stuck with it. It took a few years to start paying
off. And Alan kept saying, “I thought you were going to make money in this
business. It just costed us money.” But it did. I had some trials and
tribulations through, you helped me figure out how to track whether the
program was working or not and just stuck with it.

Don Patrick: If I remember correctly, when you were starting with them, they
told you that the client size would grow and I think it had to do with them,
how long they’re in the market on the radio.

Cindy Skaggs: Right, right. When I started, they were only on the radio up
in North Georgia, and they hadn’t gotten a big station in Atlanta, and they
did, and that did help, and the market develops as they work through Dave
Ramsey’s Baby Steps, which there’s seven of them, and if anybody’s
interested, they can go to DaveRamsey.com and look it up, if you don’t know.
His baby steps, but it basically walks you through getting out of debt and
then investing for the long term and saving for college and giving back once
you’ve reached your goals. So it’s a great program that makes it simple to
understand, but hard to do. Everybody has to do the hard work of saving and
living within their means.

So I did that from 2003 ‘til 2017. When I decided early on that I would only
do this until it was the new referrals were affecting my client service to
my current clients. And with DOL in 2017 and Carmen was getting married, we
were busy with that. I decided it was time to give it up. Still follow the
principles and 99% of my clients have come from his referral service. So it
worked.

Don Patrick: But it was a challenging, high volume, right? And yet you’re
supposed to contact these people fairly quickly. So you and Alan primarily
worked on kind of automating some of the processes.

Cindy Skaggs: Yeah. And you helped me figure out how to identify the gems
and all the noise. So because it grew, the program grew so fast, I was in
2007 getting over 200 referrals a month, and they were driving from the
North Georgia border and the Alabama border to come see me.

‘Cause I couldn’t go to them. I was too busy. So people were having to go
too far. He needed to expand the program with more advisors. Which he did,
but I decided that the only way I could continue the program was if I got
some other IFG advisors to help me and share the referrals with them and
share the business, split the business with me.

And I did that with four people and Sanders Salem really worked out the best
and continued with it. Paul Peeler and I have a handful of shared clients.
But Sandra was just a workhorse with the phone calling and so I would just
split them up. But I think what you were referring to was developing a
questionnaire that I put at my website that I required them to complete
before I would meet with them.

And that questionnaire led me to what baby step they ran because I wouldn’t
meet with them if they weren’t in baby step four unless they needed life
insurance or a rollover. Some immediate need. I wouldn’t do a comprehensive
plan or take their money for a comprehensive plan until they were in baby
step four, which is ready for investing and out of debt except for their
house.

Don Patrick: So one of the things about the fact that they are Dave Ramsey
disciples and you are too, you’re speaking the same language.

Cindy Skaggs: So they were very warm leads. They were excited to hear from
me. It was almost bizarre and they loved to tell me their stories, but I had
to limit that time because if they weren’t an opportunity, I had to help
them with what I could on their phone, think of it as pro bono work, and
then get onto the next one because I had 12 more calls to make.

Don Patrick: Crazy.

Cindy Skaggs: Worked very well. The program’s changed and it’s not that easy
anymore, but it wasn’t easy getting to that point of when I was overflowing
with leads either. It was commitment to stick with the program.

Don Patrick: Yeah, it was hard work. You were running a gun for a long time.

Cindy Skaggs: Literally, because I did, I worked out of a cubicle, so I’d
use the conference rooms and I’d figure out how to make an excuse to go get
something from a printer or something.

Run to the bathroom and run, because I didn’t have any assistance. So I was,
it’s sometimes sweaty and literally knocking people in the hallway because
I was trying to get back into my client meeting where I left them sitting
there going, “Where’d she go?” But another thing that has been very helpful
that you turned me on to was the bucket system.

The tool that I use now, and this may get into your tech stack talk, but
Income for Life has been a life changer for me because I am very analytical
and can get so bogged down in comprehensive plans that I feel like they’re
never finished. And with Income for Life, it was the same tool that we used
with our old financial profile software that was called Post Retirement
Navigator. And so now it’s a product from a company called Wealth2K that
does the bucket system for how to invest the dollars when you’re in the
distribution phase and my clients just love it. That’s how I end my meetings
and their eyes just go wide. And, “I can’t believe this can really work.”
And so that’s, I don’t know that there’s that many people in the consortium
that use it, but it works really well for me.

Don Patrick: Yeah. I mean, the buckets are, I mean, it’s just a pie chart
unfolded, right? And now they can see different buckets, what’s going to be
in those buckets for the rest of their life.

And then I assume on your reviews, we’ll talk about this, but basically it
says, okay, next year, this is how much money based on the assumption should
be each of these buckets, right? And that’s black and white.

Cindy Skaggs: And this is the monthly amount that you can expect for the
rest of your life. It’s not guaranteed, but I use very conservative rates of
return.

I show them how their investments are beating those rates of return. So the
worst-case scenario is we do better than we thought. And they can decide
whether they want to leave behind the whole amount they started with or
100,000 per kid or however we want to work the plan, the tool can do it.

So that’s another thing now that I require for a new prospect is they have
to complete the questionnaire at my website and also watch the Income for
Life video at my website so that they can understand that program.

Don Patrick: How many buckets do you typically use?

Cindy Skaggs: Five to six. And that doesn’t mean that each one has its own
investment, but it’s very common for me to use more than one IRA.

So the first bucket, if we’ve got non-qualified money is there, and if
there’s more than is needed for the pre-RMD age, then let’s spread it over
the other segments to reduce taxable income from IRAs in later segments.
Then I put the Roth at the end to get the tax-free growth as long as
possible. And then in the middle for maybe bucket two and three, we have one
IRA, and bucket four and five, we have another IRA that’s more aggressive
than the first IRA so that their money that they’re not tapping into can be
growing and showing them that growth that they’re missing out on in the
early segment to help them be conservative so they can sleep at night, you
know, with where they’re taking their monthly income.

Don Patrick: So it’s more work on your part to open up numerous accounts,
several accounts. But from the client perspective, it’s got to be great
because they see the nickname. This is Bucket Two and Three. This account’s
Bucket Three and Four, right?

Cindy Skaggs: Exactly. Exactly. And we can go through their review and say,
“Okay. What have we gotten as a rate of return?” And sometimes it’s, if it’s
new, a client, we’ve only got three or four years. And I said, “Well, let’s
look at the 10-year return for that portfolio and compare it to what we were
expecting with the income for life.”

And especially with 2022 lately, it’s helped a lot, you know, don’t let this
short-term return concern you too much because the 10-year return is how
your money manager has done over good and bad time.

Don Patrick: So they can see that they don’t have to touch that money for a
long time. So the market volatility really shouldn’t bother. It does, but it
shouldn’t, right?

Cindy Skaggs: Yeah. Yeah. Or you try to tell them. I know it’s been, these
more aggressive segments down here have been more volatile, but that’s why
we put them there is because they did have time to benefit from that up and
down from the market.

Don Patrick: So can you do any state planning, income tax planning, risk
management work at all?

Cindy Skaggs: I do. Risk management is usually long-term care, but I have
had several clients that needed life insurance this year. It’s not common
that I do that a lot, but I mean, it’s a sub, I have an agenda item that’s
insurance and I ask them if they have any concerns in this area or any
questions about their current coverage, even including health insurance at
work.

You said risk management. I use Holistiplan for tax planning. I’ve just been
at that a year and a half. And the scenarios get me kind of bogged down,
kind of like that financial plans, but it also helps support the advice
because it can get complicated when, well, taxes are complicated and it
helps make it easy to see both their past tax return, just looking at that
tax report, and then building a scenario of what if we did a conversion, or
what if you took more from the IRA instead of the non-qualified money, those
types of things.

Don Patrick: And how do the clients respond to that?

Cindy Skaggs: Good, good. I have been doing, like I said, for about a year
and a half now. If I haven’t gotten their tax return before a review, I tell
them in the review, “If you will get that to me, I will show you a nice
summary so we can use it to help us plan for the future.” And they’ve been
taking me up on it.

Don Patrick: That’s great.

Cindy Skaggs: As far as legal work, I make sure they’ve got their plans in
place, their state plan. And if they don’t, urge them, offer to go with
them, offer to help them do their homework, to meet with the attorney. I had
a couple of situations with special needs trust where went and was involved
in those meetings.

Had a blended family situation where they were trying to protect their own,
each of them, their own stuff for their kids. And so we did a trust there
and I went and met with them and their attorney to make sure everybody
understood how it got set up after the fact because they kept telling me
things.

I’m like, “That’s not what this says. You’re not understanding it.” And I
didn’t want to argue with, so I said, “We need to sit down with your
attorney.” So they paid for my time to do that.

Don Patrick: Now, are you charging separate fees or just an asset management
fee and everything is kind of wrapped up under that.

Cindy Skaggs: No, I do financial planning fees, especially if it’s a new
client that wants the comprehensive plan that I think that’s the best way to
learn everything about them and give them a taste of what it’s like to work
with me, kind of build that trust before we get into investments and
products. But if somebody’s coming to me, like I said, they watched that
video for Income for Life, and that’s what they want.

And I can tell from, you know, they’re facing retirement, they’ve done all
the other things right, there’s not a whole lot I can fix, then we focus
just on Income for Life. And how to implement the plan, I make a big point
of saying implement because we look at the illustration at every meeting
when they’re 30, 40, 50 years old.

But when we get to the point of backing off from the risk they’ve been
taking during accumulation. They need to understand why all of a sudden I’m
investing something that’s going to pay 2.89% for the first segment and
that’s where it gets exciting.

Don Patrick: So how do you implement in the buckets? Do you use particular
models or what does that look like?

Cindy Skaggs: So it takes some time, but I analyze each risk category using
our returns comparison spreadsheet that Investment Solutions puts together.
So if I’m looking for a 40% equity model, I go to that page, go down the
things, the options that I like, which I’m very known to use the New
Dimensions profitability models, the American Funds ActiveCore models, and
the iPowered. I have probably 20 accounts in Alpha Capital also. I like the
iPowered because they have the open architecture with other things besides
just Invesco and they had those tax aware models.

But another LPL research model that I like a lot is the LPL Research Tax
Aware Strategic Mutual Fund. I’ve used that quite a bit for non–qualified
money in the first segment. So depending on the bucket and how much risk
that bucket should take based on the client’s risk score, which I use the
Advisory World Pro’s proposal to get the risk score, the overall plan should
fit their risk score.

Don Patrick: And how are you funding that first bucket? Especially when
there was no interest being paid for about 10 years until the last couple of
years.

Cindy Skaggs: Yeah. I’ve been using 20% equity models.

Don Patrick: Okay.

Cindy Skaggs: if it’s all IRA money that I’m using new dimensions, 20, 40,
60, 80. And if it’s after tax, if it’s non-qualified money, I’ll use that
LPO tax aware or I’ve used IPP. iPowered, Tax Aware also. They’ve just been
making a lot of changes in creating gains with their rebalancing and that
made me nervous.

Don Patrick: Yeah, I understand.

Cindy Skaggs: Yeah. And I give the client the choice is, you know, if you’d
be more comfortable in the bank, you just have to understand, we’re not
going to put a whole five years of money in, out of an IRA into your bank.

We can do a year at a time or six months at a time, but you don’t want to
incur tax on dollars that you’re potentially not going to use that year. I
really only had one client all these years do that and I shouldn’t have
because she did well at first controlling her spending and then she got out
of hand and it’s fallen apart.

Don Patrick: Oh, that’s never happened before to any of us.

Cindy Skaggs: Oh, and she ended up in the hospital with serious heart
problems. I thought, well, nothing about it–but she got better and that’s
good. She has a spending problem and her mother told me she did before she
passed away and left her all the money. And I always determined we were
going to stick on that Dave Ramsey plan, but you can only control clients so
much.

Don Patrick: That’s right. It’s behavioral. My experience has been if
they’ve been spenders all their lives, that doesn’t change. And if they’ve
been savers all their lives, that doesn’t change.

Cindy Skaggs: Yeah. Right.

Don Patrick: So what year was it that you joined Connie, Al, and Hank?

Cindy Skaggs: I was April 15th, 2002.

Don Patrick: Tax day. You are a founding member of IFG.

Cindy Skaggs: Yeah. Yes. I’ve been here 25 years.

Don Patrick: It’s crazy. Amazing.

Cindy Skaggs: Well, that 25 years includes my master’s because I justify
including the time with my master’s because the CFP board gave me credits
toward the years in the business. They said, “Yeah, you can count pro bono
work.” Which of course I did while I was in school. Helping anybody that
would listen to me.

Don Patrick: So over time with Dave Ramsey, the quality of the leads improve
significantly, you end up quite a few high net worth clients.

Cindy Skaggs: Yeah, quite a few. I have maybe two dozen households over a
million. Miss Sandra got a couple too. Also, I mean, my system wasn’t always
perfect, and she got some great business out of it all, so…

And like I said, at first, I mean, my first referral was a guy that worked
at a movie theater. I’m like, “Oh, well, Don, this guy owned part of an
airplane. He had real estate all over Key West. He was developing the online
ticket purchase for the movie theater.” You can’t judge a book by its cover.

And the first Dave Ramsey event, live event that he came to, I guess it’s
the only one he came to, but Dave does a thing where stand up if you think
you came the farthest. And he had flown to the meeting from Key West with
his mother. So he won the prize for coming the farthest to attend the event.

Don Patrick: That’s a great story. I love it.

Cindy Skaggs: Yeah.

Don Patrick: So what do you love about the profession? I know you love it
and you’re passionate about it.

Cindy Skaggs: Yeah, I remember when you and I were getting to know each
other and you were just stepping up to head this IFG group and you’d see me
get off the phone and just be so excited for how I helped someone or found a
great opportunity.

I just love helping people get ahead and realize their goals and their
dreams and it just get a real excitement from it because I feel like, wow, I
did that. I did help them. And after being in the business, as long as I
had, they tell me that, I mean, the people that are retiring today, “We
couldn’t have done this without you Cindy.” And I know they could have, but
would they have if they didn’t have the direction and the focus and the,
“Don’t distract yourself with that. That’s not the next thing you should be
doing.” So just that satisfaction of my job making a difference.

Don Patrick: It’s incredibly rewarding. So what are some of your bigger
challenges running your business?

Cindy Skaggs: Well, I had a little bit of background in running a business
when I was in high school. I know that sounds ridiculous, but I managed a
couple of small businesses and mainly the bookkeeping and the money side of
things. My degree from Georgia Tech was industrial management, which is kind
of a business management degree.

And I knew how things should be done, but I wasn’t sure how to do them in
this business. So I’ve developed that, but always had a good sense of, well,
I think it’s a good sense of spending money to get to where I want to be.
Don’t cut short expenses, staff, materials, Christmas mailing, whatever it
is because you want to save a dime. Because that’s spending the energy on
things that you should be doing that the right way and getting on to the
next thing and not trying to limp by with an old piece of software or
whatever it is that, you know, you need a new computer, you need a new
printer, chairs—whatever it is. Spend the money to do it right.

Don Patrick: Yeah, that you’re investing in the business.

Cindy Skaggs: Yeah, and Dave Ramsey was a big investment. It was very
expensive, but it kept me off the streets trying to find clients. Every
meeting that I’ve gone to where the subject is how to find referrals, like,
can I take a break while y’all are talking about this?

Because I’ve got more referrals than I can deal with. But, you know, and
it’s a constant discussion among advisors that I just never had that problem
finding people to do business with.

Don Patrick: So you do a great job of tracking your business. I know you,
you track. Referrals and new clients. And you have a very detailed P&L
that you run and monitor. They’ve got a—

Cindy Skaggs: Well, and I thank my staff for handling that for me because I
can’t do it all. When Harmon was hired by Integrated, coincidentally, Allen
was retiring from his career, my husband. And so she trained him to do the
hands-on stuff that I needed doing. So I put him to work and again, I didn’t
have to train him because she could.

And still to this day, things come up that we were talking about in our
stand-up this morning about the Christmas mailing. And all the pieces we
need to put in place to make sure it goes out on time. And she’s done it for
years, so he can always fall back on her if he has questions.

Don Patrick: Carmen, worked for you for how long? How many years?

Cindy Skaggs: She started in 2008 when she was a sophomore in college.

Don Patrick: And she’s developed a lot of your systems as well, and tracking
and things, correct?

Cindy Skaggs: She’s created a lot

Don Patrick: Yeah.

Cindy Skaggs: Because she knew my processes, she knew what I needed to do.
An example is the Redtail Workflows. We went to one of the Redtail
University events in Chicago and we came home and we were doing, at the
time, offsite quarterly meetings where I’d rent a room, an office complex
for the day, and we would go through the flip charts, detail in every step
so that she could take that information and write the workflow basically.

So a lot of the ones that we’ve created, she’s shared with other advisors
that use her services.

Don Patrick: Yeah, I think the virtual assistants use her workflow, if I
remember.

Cindy Skaggs: Yeah. And I remember at the Chicago event, we learned how to
use automation, where if you set up a field a certain way, it automatically
kicks off all the steps for that workflow.

So that’s in my client meetings, at the end of the meeting, I set up the
next annual review and it tells her to go send him a confirmation and goes
ahead and schedules all the things that Alan needs to do to prepare me for
that meeting in a year.

Don Patrick: So then, she gets hired by Integrated for the virtual assistant
program, which she’s a team lead. She’s really good, but you’re still using
her through the virtual assistant program, right?

Cindy Skaggs: Yes. Yes, I am. And I’m so glad that I can do that. And she
has a career path after I’m retired from this business.

Don Patrick: She does. And it was pretty substantial savings for you, if I
recall.

Cindy Skaggs: Yeah, everybody knows the salary isn’t the only comp that your
staff receives, all the benefits, and so IFG took that over, and I pay for
her time just like everyone else does. Works really well, and I also work
with Kim Powers, mainly doing my phone work for scheduling meetings and
reminding meetings.

Don Patrick: And let me guess, Alan works for nothing.

Cindy Skaggs: Right now it’s next to nothing. It all goes in his 401k.
That’s just growing. I was paying him more and my CPA said, “Why are you
paying payroll tax?”

I mean, he can just use your income. And I’m like, “I know.” So we’re
actually going to make a change at the end of the year. He’s going to come
under the employment of my LLC and leave ISS and start using my 401k where
we can maximize his contributions because with ISS, he’s not, I mean, it’s
enough to call him an ISS payroll employee, but I’m excited about him, us
being able to put more towards retirement if he works for my employment and
for my LSC and makes more and he deserves it. I mean, I let him go off, but.

Don Patrick: How nice of you.

Cindy Skaggs: He works like a good 20 hours a week, at least, probably
pushes 30. ‘Cause he does a lot of the behind-the-scenes, my metrics,
keeping up with all of my financials. He can tell you everything about my
client works’ database.

Don Patrick: No, he’s great. So next step, we know you use the Redtail for
CRM, Income for Life, Holistiplan, anything else?

Cindy Skaggs: Yeah. I don’t use Nitrogen because I use the AdvisoryWorld
risk scoring. And my main reason for that is I get very frustrated with not
having client-approved materials for proposals because I do so much volume.
I need something that I can show to the client. So I get them to do the risk
score and then I run the proposal. Which has the, if it’s an LPL model, it
has the fact sheet for the investment. As the side by side, here’s how you
invest it now, here’s how I’m recommending you change. And I don’t have to
worry about whether a piece from another vendor is client-approved.

Don Patrick: That makes sense.

Cindy Skaggs: So, if I can present my recommendations by email, and I’m fine
with meeting the clients to go over the proposal.

Sometimes I’ll do that by Zoom or if they want to come in person, but you
know, sometimes they’ll come back and say, “Yeah I like everything you’ve
presented.” “Okay, Carmen will be in touch.” And the paperwork’s done and
I’ve moved on to the next one

Don Patrick: Let’s talk about onboarding a new client. So we know that you
send them to the website first and they have to fill out that little
questionnaire and listen to the Income for Life video.

Cindy Skaggs: Yeah. And someone has talked to them, either they’ve called in
the office or I’ve returned a call, it’s a referral from a client or
whatever. And so I’ve talked to them and gotten their email address and we
send them an email that has the links to my website a explains the
questionnaire.

Don Patrick: And then what’s next?

Cindy Skaggs: I call them after I get the, we call it the IDQ, Initial
Discovery Questionnaire. And walk through it with them, ask some questions
about the debt, about the, you know, is this all the life insurance you
have, or the questionnaire has risk tolerance at the end of it.

So, explain my analysis of their answers. And determine whether I think
they’re a fit for me, really, in my mind, before I get to the end of that
call. And if I do, then I ask them, “I think that there’s some ways that I
can help you. Would you like to commit to a face-to-face meeting?”

There’s no obligation to it. And so we coordinate that. Carmen sends the
confirmation. Alan prepares the discovery packet, which is an agenda, my
bio, about 10 different pieces about IFG, about LPL, social security, the
common things that you would see in an opener pack. And I just had one last
week that went really well.

It’s a client’s son-in-law and daughter that I’ve been talking to since
2019. They finally come in and they’re behind the eight ball with needing to
get started with. I think they’re in mid-40s, kids, college funding, all the
things they need to do. So, at the end of that meeting, just like with the
call, I decide to myself if I want to take it, if the fit meeting fits.

And so I give them the option, “Here’s how I do everything. Do you have any
more questions? Let me know if you would like to go further. I think I could
really help.” But soft sell. I’m not a pushy person and it seems to work.

Don Patrick: So they do want to get involved with you. What’s next after
that fit meeting?

Cindy Skaggs: We decide how by phone because if it’s a comprehensive
financial plan, then they need to do my homework, which is a fact finder.
And I’ve tried getting them to input stuff to WealthVision, but it doesn’t
really work that well. When they turn from a prospect to a client, you
almost have to re enter all the stuff. Anyway, so I have them do it in paper
form.

Don Patrick: So, you are using WealthVision?

Cindy Skaggs: Yes. I’m sorry. I didn’t say that earlier. Yes, I use
WealthVision.

Don Patrick: So, now we get everything inputted, you create a financial
plan, then what’s next with the clients?

Cindy Skaggs: Uh-huh. There’s usually a meeting or two presenting the plan
because it’s not complete. There’s changes or missing information. And so my
financial planning fee, which is for a couple, it’s 3,500 dollars, includes
me on a retainer for 12 months. So I’m anxious for them to complete, to say
the plan is complete, which includes an action plan. And they keep wanting
me to–I have a client right now, they’re wanting me to do some of the action
items.

I said, “Well, no, we’re not going to–I got to keep my financial planning
hat on until we finish the plan, and then I can help you with the action
items,” which involves investments in insurance. So I have to force myself
to be strict with that because of course, I want them to invest. I want to
help with the other, implement the plan, but we got to make sure it’s
finished first.

So their latest email, this couple I’m thinking about said, “Yeah, that
makes sense. Okay, we’ll call your office and get back with you.” So anyway,
so implement the plan. They’ve already paid. I like to get all money
upfront. If they insist, I’ll take half up front and half when we’re
finished with the plan.

But then the 12-month ticker starts of being on call for their help with
implementing the plan, making the changes that they need to. And a lot of
times that gets us involved in investments and insurance, urging them to get
their estate plan done and whatever the plan tells us to do.

Don Patrick: So now we have an existing client and how many progress review
meetings do you do in a year with a client typically?

Cindy Skaggs: 95% of them are annual. I have a handful of clients that I
meet with twice a year, but I do not do quarterly.

Don Patrick: I don’t think clients like that annual.

Cindy Skaggs: Yeah, it’s overkill. One of my largest clients, she wants to
meet once a year and do business. And the other six-month meeting is out to
lunch, fisting and talking about family and having fun.

Her husband passed away. He used to work with Alan and she’s not the
business-minded. Her career has been as a seamstress. She does tailoring and
she’s very good at it. But she just wants to talk about her friends and her
life. So we had one of those a couple of weeks ago, one of the lunches out.

And I had another client that was, they’re not a client anymore, but the
husband said, “The only way you’re gonna, she never would come to meetings.”
He said, “What you need to do is just take her out to lunch.” She did that
and she tried to sell me on some multi-level marketing.

Don Patrick: All right. I want to jump into something you’ve been working
on. It’s super important for all of us. And you’ve come down quite a path in
terms of really creating succession for the business, retirement for you. I
know you’ve used the LPL partial book sale as well. And kind of give us some
color, well, obviously your experience with partial book sale, some of your
concerns about it before you did it, and you’ve been working on this for how
many years now in terms of creating a succession for the firm?

Cindy Skaggs: I know about five years ago, you told me to just relax ‘cause
I was going to every webinar and everything I could learn about succession
planning. And you said, “When you’re ready to retire, there’s going to be
people here in the consortium that will be interested in your business.” I
was like, “Oh, okay.”

So it, the, really the start, my first experience with the M&A team at
LPL was with Sandra because she was retiring and we had a book of split
business. She wanted me to buy, but I was not interested in buying it. And
so we used M&A and I say we because Sandra hadn’t been involved in doing
a business valuation or anything like that.

And so she didn’t realize what she had in her. She was trying to get me to
buy it for a quarter of what she ended up selling it for. So through that
process, we took some convincing, but we got her to give Alan access to her
client work. And so he could help her with coming up with the numbers that a
buyer wants to know.

But M&A provided us 15 interested advisors that we interviewed five of
them, I believe. And she ended up choosing an advisor out of Asheville,
North Carolina. But that process really got me thinking about, “Okay, Sandra
can do this. I can do this, too.” And I knew how much work, it’s not just
the time to interview the people and find the right person.

It’s the mental anguish of you feel like you’re giving up on your clients or
you’re going to miss them. So it’s an emotional toll in addition to the work
of getting to the point of doing it. So when I got to, when they came out
with the partial book, I think it was still just a pilot program.

I was very interested. You only got one and a half times instead of what we
hear in the industry to, you know, plus percent, two times, trailing 12. And
so I played with the tool, the partial book tool, and you just go down and
check the accounts that you want to be rid of. And they have some rules
around the program.

But it was just so easy as you checked off the accounts, this dollar amount
keeps growing up in the right-hand corner of the screen, and all you have to
do is send a letter. It has to be LPL formatted and worded letter, which I
am very grammar specific and I can’t stand when things aren’t my way, but
anyway.

I think I have a copy of that letter here. I’m printing it anyway. I guess I
put it with another stack of stuff, but you send that out. And I was, “Hey,”
like the next, it was pretty amazing, and they were all small clients that
weren’t using my services, weren’t staying in touch with me, I couldn’t get
them to come in to meet.

And, it wasn’t all commission-based. Some annuities, but basically
households that I didn’t feel like I was serving right and was trying to
clean up my book for my succession. So it did that. And I thought I would
turn around and do it again once I cleaned that off, but I’ve really
struggled with trying to find another chunk that I would be willing to rid
myself of.

Don Patrick: Was there any pushback from some of the clients?

Cindy Skaggs: No, I got an email from one man that wished me well and was
sorry they didn’t make the cut. Well, it turns out that client has long-term
care policy with me and I didn’t realize it, but partial book could not
handle fixed insurance. So I’m still servicing him on his long-term care.

So I have gotten to talk to him as a result of that. And he’s been very
happy with the advisor from the investor-focused solutions department.

Don Patrick: Oh, that’s good to hear.

Cindy Skaggs: That client I mentioned in the beginning that flew in on the
airplane, he was in the partial book sale with a PacLife annuity, and I
never talked to him, but I assumed he was upset ‘cause I got word from
PacLife that he was trying to close his account. And so I urgently, there’s
been maybe a half dozen that I’ve had to, you know, contact IFS and say,
“You need to contact this client, you need to help them.” And the annuity
seemed to be the slowest to get off the books and move over to IFS.

So he’s still in the product and I guess they’re satisfying. I tried my best
not to contact him because that letter is pretty much, “This is what’s
happening, and see ya.” You don’t want to confuse them of, “Wait, are you
still working with me?” And I had one client, one of those people emailed me
about a couple of months ago, said she needed something and I replied to her
that I’m no longer your advisor, but I will have them contact you. And she
was like, “Okay, thank you very much.”

Don Patrick: That’s great.

Cindy Skaggs: Yeah. Yeah.

Don Patrick: It’s a good program. So where are you at now in terms of your
succession, selling the businesses?

Cindy Skaggs: So my business goal this year was to find my partner. And
again, that emotional struggle with leaving the business, feel like you’re
parting with your clients, finding the right advisor that I think is going
to treat my clients the way I would and be someone that I would want to be
my advisor.

I’ve interviewed about a half a dozen IFG advisors ‘cause I wanted to stay
within IFG and my business is corporate. So some of them that I was talking
to are corporate or are a hybrid. And so that affected both my interest and
theirs. It’s much simpler to go corporate to corporate. And so I have
narrowed that down to one, the deal is not done, but we’re working on it and
I’m very excited.

Don Patrick: So what does the timeline look like for this? You’ve, so you’ve
identified an advisor at IFG, what are next steps? What does that look like?

Cindy Skaggs: We’re actually planning to merge our practices.

Don Patrick: Okay.

Cindy Skaggs: Initially, I was looking for someone to do it in two tranches
where they would buy a hundred clients, households, and I would keep 50 for
another two years.

But through talking with this advisor that I’ve chosen, we’ve decided it
would be easier to merge our practices. And as we get through introducing,
you know, it probably take the first 12 months just introducing all of my
clients to the new team of our merged practices. And second year is being
available for meetings, still meeting with maybe some of the larger clients
with the advisors that are going to take over where I moved from first chair
to second chair, if you know what I mean, from the lead to turning it over
to them to handle the meeting or come up with some excuse where so and so is
going to handle your meeting.

I’m not going to be able to be there, but I’ll check in with you with a
phone call afterwards and see if you have any questions. So we’re thinking
two to three years in reality that I will make myself available if needed,
but staging out as I can.

Don Patrick: And because it’s a merger, I assume that you fall under the DBA
of this advisor, their branding.

Cindy Skaggs: We haven’t gotten to that. Probably. We haven’t gotten to
discussing that yet. For now, I will maintain email and because I am IFG, I
don’t know the answer to that question yet.

Don Patrick: All right. Interesting. Well, it’s exciting. It’s a big deal.

Cindy Skaggs: Yeah. The good news is LPL has a program in their M&A
department where if you use their service, that’s $5,000. It not only helps
with the contracts and getting the deal done, but also transitioning all the
accounts to the new rep code because it’s LPL to LPL.

Don Patrick: That’s huge. And that’s not very expensive.

Cindy Skaggs: Yeah. Yeah. So we’re going to split that cost. And save us a
lot of headache.

Don Patrick: That is great. So, basically, you’ve been working on this for
three, four years, and then you got another two to three years, right?

Cindy Skaggs: Yeah. Well, I had my first valuation done in 2015, so thinking
about it for 10 years.

Don Patrick: Yeah. You did that with FP Transitions, right?

Cindy Skaggs: Yeah, I had great hopes of hiring some great women into my
practice and building them up to take over, but I just didn’t have time.

I was too busy getting business. And so that’s an excuse because I could
have made the time if it was that important. But I’ve had some bad hires and
that took a lot of energy out of me. And so when it came to trying to find a
junior advisor to take over, and Carmen would have been perfect if she was
interested, but she’s not.

Don Patrick: It’s hard work. It’s a heck of a commitment.

Cindy Skaggs: Yeah. Yeah.

Don Patrick: Bottom line is you just don’t decide in one year, make
something like this happen. It takes time.

Cindy Skaggs: Yeah. And just get your head around it. I mean, the first
quarter I’m like, “Okay, find someone, how do I do that?” And Andrews was a
big help helping me find people that he thought was a good fit.

‘Cause he’s been working with me with my business coaching and he knows what
I do and how I do it. It’s paid off. Yeah.

Don Patrick: Yeah. All right. I’m going to wrap things up a little bit. Can
you use three words to describe your talents and strength?

Cindy Skaggs: I’m a good listener. Very detail-oriented and I can analyze
things well. I can put all the pieces together to figure out the best way to
do something.

Don Patrick: I would agree with all three, absolutely. Tell us something
about yourself that others do not know.

Cindy Skaggs: Well, we’ve already talked about the thing that I was going to
say.

Don Patrick: Yeah–

Cindy Skaggs: No, it was my first career. Most people don’t know what I
said, but I have an interesting story that most people don’t know.

When I graduated from Georgia Tech, I thought that I deserved a new car. So
I went and bought a new car and it was the highest unemployment since the
depression. After I’d had 70 interviews, I ended up waiting tables, teaching
aerobics, and selling computers for commission only. So, the computer
company filed bankruptcy. Our apartment burned down.

Don Patrick: Oh my God.

Cindy Skaggs: And, so Alan and I lived out of a storage unit for about three
weeks before we could find another apartment. So one of my girlfriends
worked at a placement firm and she got me an interview with her, the guy
that found people jobs.

And I went in there and told him my sob story, and there was tears shed, and
he said, “I can find you a job, but you gotta prom–” No, he said, “I can get
you an interview, but you gotta promise me you’re not gonna cry.” And that
was with Burroughs. So, I got the job.

Don Patrick: That’s great. Yeah. Well, Cindy, this has been great. I really
appreciate you taking time, learned a lot. Always learn a lot from these
things and I want to thank you and thanks for being a founding member.

Cindy Skaggs: Thank you. And thank you for inviting me to do this podcast.
It was fun.

Don Patrick: All right. Bye.

Cindy Skaggs: Bye-bye.

Well, that’s it for today’s show. Thanks for listening.

If you’ve got something to share, send an email to
dpatrick@thebraintrust.net. We want to know what works.

Until next time. See ya.