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 10 of the IFG podcast, What Works, and our guest today is David Gaynes, although on my screen it says Warren Buffett. I’m honored. He’s the founder of Gaynes Financial in Atlanta, Georgia. Welcome, Warren. I mean, excuse me, David.

David Gaynes: Yeah. Well, I’m happy to be here.

Don Patrick: So let’s kick this thing off. You’ve been in the business a long time. We’ve known each other for over 30 years. It’s crazy. This podcast could go on for five hours, but we won’t do that. So tell us about you, your family and this is, there’s a whole lot of folks out here in the consortium that have not met you, and even those who have met you probably don’t know all the little things. So just tell us a little about you and your family.

David Gaynes: All right. Well, I am known, I come to work so people actually call me by my name because anywhere outside of work, I’m either known as the father of the five boys or, “Oh, you’re Meredith’s husband.” So my wife is a volleyball coach, basketball coach, and just, she is out in the community everywhere and everybody knows her.

She’s probably around for political office, but so I really, I come to work so I can be somebody, I can be my own person. Yeah, part of your identity is your family and I have five boys, now three of them are in college, right now at Georgia College in Milledgeville, I have a sophomore, a senior, and a second-year senior. He should be graduating this fall. And then I have two boys that are still in high school. One’s a 10th grader and one’s a senior at Marist here in Atlanta. And I serve the role for a lot of people, you think you have it bad until you find someone else who’s got it worse than you, right?

So when they learn that I have two kids in private school and three kids in college they say, “Well, maybe my issues aren’t that bad.” And then I tell them, “Well, you think that’s bad? I have, you know, my oldest son is 22 and my youngest is 16. So I have five teenage, young adult boys on my car insurance all at the same time too.”

Don Patrick:Ouch. Oh my gosh.

David Gaynes:But it’s amazing what your lifestyle will do for motivating your success in business.

Don Patrick: So I think something that people will enjoy is, so you played basketball at Emory. Correct?

David Gaynes:Yep.

Don Patrick:And Meredith? Wasn’t she like one of the first WNBA players?

David Gaynes: Yeah, so she was, yeah, so when she graduated the year before the WNBA, they asked her to play. So my wife played professional basketball before me, and so it was the predecessor to that, but when we met, she was coaching, volleyball and basketball at Oberthorpe University, and then she got her teaching certificate. And then she was a teacher for a while and also taught or coached, basketball, and volleyball at high school level. And then after, I think when we were pregnant with our third kid, is when she decided to stay home because we figured out that her salary was just going to cover the daycare, but now full circle, now she’s back coaching.

She’s coached boys basketball at Marist High School for the last three years. It was 9th grade. Three years ago, JV boys last year, and this year she requests to go back to ninth grade So she’s coaching that and she’s also coaching middle school girls volleyball too because she just doesn’t have enough stuff to do with five boys, and a needy husband and three new puppies.

Don Patrick:Oh my goodness.

David Gaynes:And I tell people all that kind of stuff, not because I want them to feel sorry for me or anything else, because I can’t really complain about any of it, because I tell people every single one of these things is all self-inflicted, right? We chose to do it. It was a conscious decision to do it on purpose. So you reap what you sow.

Don Patrick: Yeah. So if I recall correctly, she won five boys. And I know Eve was really, she was really hoping for one girl in there, but she got the five boys and I remember you used to have a little basketball hoop on the counter in the kitchen for the infant boys and they grew up with that basketball hoop playing basketball.

David Gaynes: So, funny story. So, we lived in a little split-level ranch, so we had this little Fisher Price basketball hoop. And we would, the kids would play basketball in the kitchen when they were little, but especially when they were getting ready to take a bath, right? They would take all their clothes off, they get the bathroom.

But while the bath was running, they would run downstairs and they would play naked basketball, right? Because they’re two, three, four years old. They don’t care. And so my wife and I had the foresight to actually take some videos of that so that at some point, I can’t wait to pull these videos out when they’re getting married and have the slideshow or whatever it is.

We’ll be able to, and that brings me to another thing that’s important is you never ever pass up an opportunity to embarrass your kids.

Don Patrick: Payback, baby. Payback. I love it. That’s wonderful. And, oh my gosh, it’s crazy.

David Gaynes: Well, what’s funny is, not that is, because obviously, you know me, I mean, when I started in this business, I was 22 years old, right out of college and in the predecessor to IFG where we were working. I think I was hired and I think six months later is when you were hired is six or nine months later, right?

Pretty soon after is when you were hired as director of financial planning to join our firm. And then obviously became my mentor so you’ve known me before I was married and kid. So you’ve kind of seen me through the full cycle.

Don Patrick: Well, actually your career took off when you got married. We’re just talking about, that’s the old sales manager thing. Yeah, you’ll buy a Cadillac, get married, go into debt, and now you get motivated, right?

David Gaynes: Yeah. Necessity is a good motivator.

Don Patrick: So actually, that’s kind of true, wasn’t it? I mean, you were 22, you’re wet behind the ears and just getting going. But I recall correctly when you got married, it’s things start kicking in.

David Gaynes: Yeah. I mean, before, you’re single and you’re working and you’re doing a good job and you’re all that kind of stuff, but you just don’t have the same motivators and when you get married, and now, you’re going to have kids and then you don’t know how many kids you’re going to have when you start, you start thinking about–because we were planners and because we start thinking about this stuff, we’re helping people think about it beforehand, gosh, college education, I gotta buy a house. I had a car. Before we got married I had a 300 ZX. And as soon as we were married, my wife was pregnant. I started driving a Navigator. I’ve been driving big cars and trucks ever since.

Don Patrick: I forgot about that. That’s crazy. So, I remember. So, what was the year you started, ‘91?

David Gaynes: Yeah, 1991.

Don Patrick: Yeah, so you’ve been doing this 33, 34 years now, I think.

David Gaynes: Yeah, 33 and I’ll be 34, because I started at the kickoff meeting, kind of like our, what was the predecessor to our retreat, our kickoff meeting was my first meeting. And so I guess January of next year will be the beginning of 34, 34th year.

Don Patrick: So you have an incredible business, extremely successful. I do have a lot of insight in why that’s the case. Not only do you work hard, you work smart. Coaching, all kinds of things. But I remember fairly early on in your career, there was a crossroads where you had an opportunity to become a manager and yet still be a advisor.

Basically wear two hats and we had a long conversation about that and you ultimately made the decision that you were going to wear one hat and do it really well.

David Gaynes: Yeah, that was back in those in that transition times. I think it was back, it was after the first, what the dot com crisis or all that kind of stuff around 2002, I think, and I was being recruited to become over, you know, be director of financial planning, teach all these people how to do it and you can work joint cases and all that kind of stuff.

And it was kind of interesting, think about, “Oh, here’s a way I can leverage other people and all that kind of stuff.” And that was also about the time we were interviewing coaches. And so I’ve worked with Madge now for, I guess, over 20 years, as a business coach.

And that was one of the very first decisions I said, “Yeah, I get, here’s what I’m struggling with. Am I thinking about this?” And it just turned out, I mean, if you’re going to do the same amount of work, why not do it for your own benefit instead of doing it for others and keep your focus?

And if you’re successful, then it’s great, you know, if you’ll be able to reap the rewards of that and have more flexibility, because the other side of that is if you go that other role, I was going to have to go back to being an employee and W2 and work on other people’s timelines and that kind of stuff.

And so hindsight being what it is, I think it was the right decision. And when you’re in it, you see all the big opportunities and all the different places it could go, but you don’t really look at the downside as much. So that was one of my first big decisions that a business coach helped me make.

Don Patrick: Yeah, it was, so yes, it was focus. It’s hard to focus and do really well if you’re bifurcated. And you also chose to be truly an entrepreneur and own your own business and control your life. It’s not always easiest, but it’s also liberating at the same time.

David Gaynes: Yeah.

Don Patrick: So tell me about coaching. I mean, gosh, over 20 years. Obviously, it works and obviously, it’s had an impact on your business. You have an incredible business and it seems to be well run from the outside looking in. So what’s the coaching done for you and why are you still involved with Madge and the business coach?

David Gaynes: Well, people will ask me, I was at a networking group and one of the, they were going around and one of the questions was, “Hey, what’s the best business decision you ever made?” And I always, when that comes up, I always say, “Well, I think hiring a coach as early as I did was probably the best business decision.” Because we spend so much time working in our business. We don’t ever, I mean, we do business planning and I think the consortium is great because of all the resources and stuff that we have around doing it. But taking time to work in your business on a regular basis, and so with the coaching that I started out doing and I still do this day is, I mean, we spend two hours a week every week.

So it’s not like a lot of coaching programs are, hey, once a month or it’s once a quarter, but this is every week, dedicate two hours to looking at your business. And a lot of it is really deciding what is it you want out of your business. What do you want to look like? What is it you like?

What is it you don’t like? What are the challenges that you have? I mean, you’re dealing with all this kind of stuff on a regular basis. And it helps you get in front of a lot of things before problems happen. Because t one of the beauties of a coach is sometimes they’re not as close to it as you are.

They can step back and they say, “Hey, what’s the likely outcome of this decision here,” or if you don’t address this now, then you’re probably going to have to deal with this, but it’s going to be much more, it’s going to be a bigger issue or a bigger problem and that kind of stuff.

So, I mean, you don’t see everything, but it does help you think about potential obstacles and planning. Just like we do with our clients, we design a plan and then have that plan so that when life does happen, you can apply it and say, “Okay, what parts of my plan need to change? Or does anything really need to change? Or is this just something I have to address over the short term? But does it really affect the long-term plans or not?” So just like we do that with our clients, we try to do that with our business, right? Develop a business plan and then life’s going to throw you curveballs all the time. And then now you have a business plan that you can apply that against to see what needs to change. And invariably you’d say, “Hey, these are the big five things that I want to get accomplished this year. These are my big rocks I’m going to work on.”

And then something like a pandemic happens or a financial crisis or one of your employees has a health issue or something, and that just makes you stop and refocus and rethink. And okay, do we need to adjust priorities or do we need to put something on pause and add something on a higher priority on the list?

And so I think that’s the beauty and you’re having just taking some time and thinking about what your business and what you want it to look like and what you want it to do for you. And what do you want to do for your employees? And what do you want it to, what is it you want to do for your clients is an exercise that–it’s a constant exercise, right?

We’re constantly learning and we’re constantly evolving and that’s come up. I think why that was one of my, I think, my best business decision.

Don Patrick: Without a doubt and watching–so I mean, I know a fair amount about your business, David. And so for example, KPIs and tracking various indicators. I mean, I know you have a 10-year proforma on the business.

Do you know exactly where all your revenues are coming from? Forecast them out to proformas. I think you probably would have done that on your own, but I’m suspecting that the coaching was also part of that. It’s a habit of yours now, and it’s been part of your big success as a business owner. You think coaching was part of it? Or is that all you?

David Gaynes: Oh yeah, no, absolutely. I think whenever we would start dealing with questions and say, “Well, how does this work?” Or, “What’s that for?” And then you would need data, right? Well, I don’t know what that data is or whatever it is. Well, then how do we get the data?

And then you start thinking about it. So you have to build sheets and business management sheets, I may have come to it later, but I mean, and that was the other reason, I was pretty cocky when I was young or confident depending on who you ask. But it wasn’t that I thought I wasn’t going to be successful without coaching.

I just thought that a coaching, having a coach would shorten the runway. I thought it would, by having a coach, I could get there faster or sooner. And I think that’s true. It does because you address things earlier and more often or you see threats earlier and more often. So, yeah, so as far as the tracking and all that kind of stuff, we would always ask a question.

If we didn’t have the data, we would have to build something to be able to track it and see it. So it gets back to the old you should inspect what you expect. And if you don’t know, you just need the numbers to see it.

Don Patrick: Yeah, I think you probably have some of the best tracking tools I’ve seen with consortium members. And you’re correct. Without those tools, how do you make those decisions? And you’ve had, I mean, let’s just kind of walk through how your business is growing and you’ve acquired practices and you have pretty big staff and different positions, but also in terms of marketing, I know you are a networking maniac and you even created, I think, your own BNI group, super strong referrals.

So how have you grown the business? And then let’s kind of get into how the team has grown, the various directions it’s gone. But I also, I’m going to throw in this because I knew, this is one of your big tag goals, and that was to have a, I think a one-month family vacation every summer. And that was always like one of the big goals you wanted to get to. You got there quite a long time ago.

David Gaynes: Yeah. Well, I mean, and that was, you know, with coaching is like, what do you set goals and go, “Hey…” it was me and then my first person I hired was my assistant.

But if I wasn’t there, there was no new business coming in or clients weren’t getting serviced or I had to do trades or whatever it might be. So I really, you can take long weekends or take a week goal, but you really couldn’t take a couple of weeks off. And this was actually before Zoom got to be important.

And I mean, we had cell phones and that kind of stuff, but it wasn’t, you shouldn’t have the same access to do trades and all that kind of stuff that we do now, but yeah, we wanted to, my wife and I started thinking about taking some vacations and taking vacations with the kids while they still liked us because we all know as they get older like they have no desire to go on vacation with their parents until, I think, they get older and if we’re willing to pay for it, they’ll come. So we started doing some, wanted to do RV trips.

So then I said, “All right, well, then I need to have a paraplanner,” I thought. And so that was kind of my next hire. And Steve Rains, who’s on my team, was the one I hired. Actually, he accepted the offer at one of the retreats. I think it was maybe 11 or 12 years ago.

That’s how long he’s been with me, but I hired him and then see from and that gave me the ability because he was licensed. He was CFP. He was a paraplanner so he could serve, answer questions, knew the plans, could do trades, that kind of stuff and that gave me the freedom between having a good assistant and a good paraplanner.

They could pretty much handle any client need while I was gone. And that was kind of liberating. And then after that, about seven or eight years ago, I acquired a practice from a couple of advisors here who were looking to retire and it took a couple of years. There were some challenges with that, but it took a couple, about a year and a half of us negotiating to come up with a good plan or strategy.

But then, and they had about as many clients as I had. So I knew I had to hire another advisor, kind of what I call a, I put advisors usually into two categories. You either have farmers, right? Who are good at servicing and cultivating and existing group of clients or the app hunters, right?

The ones who are out there hunting and sourcing new business on a regular basis, but so at that point, with a new practice and being able to–trying to transition it over a period of three or four years from their advisors over to our systems and stuff, I needed to have a new advisor who was a good farmer and that’s when I hired Vicki to work, with me and she did a great job.

She was wonderful, but she just retired in June of this year. So, and that’s pretty awesome too. And you can help somebody, help your employees achieve what they want to do and want to get to. So now I’ve got, let’s see, I just hired a new advisor. We’re working her, helping her, transition some business and then kind of help her grow a practice underneath our team.

And that’s kind of, you know, the way I see the growth and the business going forward is I do have, BHAG goals, big, hairy, audacious goals in order to grow over the next 10 years. And I think, we can, as advisors, we can only serve, I guess the number is different for other people, but it’s usually between a hundred to 150 families successfully.

And if you want to serve more people than that, then you have to have other advisors. So going forward, I’m looking to grow organically, referrals and bring on new business through networking and stuff like we talked about. I want to bring on some new advisors who will transition some of, you know bring on their book of business over to our team as well as continue to grow, help them grow their practice so that they have equity in something and achieve those goals within our team. And I’m also considering other opportunities to acquire if it’s a good fit. When you’re looking to acquire a business, it’s got to fit. It’s got to be a win for everybody, right?

It’s got to be a win for the sellers. It’s got to be a win for the acquirer. It’s got to be a win for the clients. And there’s a lot of due diligence kinda like Integrated does when they’re, look, they’re having new advisors join the team. There’s a pretty strict vetting process and you have to have the same thing.

It’s kinda like you only want to buy it if it’s a good fit for everybody. Otherwise, you’ll set yourself up for failure. And now I’m kind of all over the board answering a bunch of different questions there, but I’ll pause and see which direction you’d like to go now.

Don Patrick: So I’m very familiar with that acquisition you made. There were some really challenging issues and all I can say is you’re extremely creative, and how you work that thing out is pretty impressive. So you bring on a new advisor, you just brought on a new advisor, or Vicki just retired and I know you care about your team as much as you do your family and your clients, that’s just who you are and you like helping.

You love helping people and so what does that look like? So this new advisor comes in, I think she has a small book, maybe not, but she’s going to grow clients. Are they owned by financial services or how does that whole thing work? Well, what’s your roadmap for that, for advisors coming in?

David Gaynes: Well, the way I look at it, and Andrews was helpful. He’s got this kind of acres agreement, which is basically it’s just an agreement on how, you know, if you help develop clients. So my goal is to have them own the clients, but from operational standpoint, we try to run all the business through one rep code because then we get the best economies of scale.

We get the best admin expenses through LPL, all that kind of stuff. And we all have access to it. But the way I look at it is, the big thing is, and the big scheme of things is I want them to bring their clients here and they own them. And then we can jointly work on clients, but I want to help them grow that business so it generates more revenue to them, and it’s good fit for their clients. But with that acres agreement, there’s a, and I think that may come from a source, but I think it’s, if you leave, it’s more of a buy-sell agreement. Hey, if you leave and you, I mean, there’s no cost to take your own client that you brought with you, but if you take clients that you grew and you sourced, then you can buy those out at some fair multiple, but if it’s a firm client that you gave them to service while they’re there, then that has a different multiple. And I think at least from all of the experience of the consortium and stuff where I–the conclusion I’ve come to is a buy-sell agreement is much more enforceable than a non-compete or something like that. So, everybody, I’m a firm believer that you should know how you get divorced before you ever get married.

Don Patrick:That’s correct.

David Gaynes:Right. Especially in business and you want to make those decisions while everybody likes each other and you’re under, it’s amicable and everybody can agree, “Hey, for whatever reason it doesn’t work out, then this is how we part.” And we’ve worked it out and everybody was agreeable to it at the beginning so that you don’t have to worry about it when, if and when more emotions are involved.

Don Patrick: Absolutely correct. It’s a big deal. So how does compensation roughly where, or is it salary or they get a percent of rep. I mean, how does that look like?

David Gaynes: Yeah, I mean, there’s three different roads you can go down from that standpoint, right? You can either, you can do just regular split code if you want to. You can do an override or I think the route we’ve chosen is to keep, like we’ve assigned rep codes to all of that business, so it’s real easy to run reports and stuff on. So from that standpoint, we’re doing a base salary, and then bonuses based on revenue, realized revenue.

Don Patrick: And so in terms of really, is it a growth goal, a referral goal, or retention goal? How does that look in terms of the bonuses?

David Gaynes: So, bonuses is basically, “Hey here’s the book of business, here’s the revenue that’s coming from that book of business.”

And if there’s, so for example, we’ve got a graded payout, right? At the beginning, from say zero to 20 million dollars, it’s this payout. Once you hit that, you get a higher payout, just kind of like we do with how we discount fees for clients at certain breakpoints as the production associated with that book of business increases, they can get a higher payout.

So the thought is that we just monitor the revenue on a quarterly basis. And if it exceeds certain amount, then we bonus based on that.

Don Patrick: Okay. So they get a base salary and then there’s a payout and it’s adjusted quarterly and as the revenues grow, their payout increases just like we do with the tiered system with our clients.

David Gaynes: Yeah. I kind of want, I mean, part of being an advisor, one of the things that we have to do is we prosper when our clients prosper, right? We suffer when our clients suffer. So if the market’s up and we’re adding assets, we’re getting raises and when the market drops or assets are leaving because we’re not doing a good job servicing or whatever that is, the cause of that, then your revenue drops.

And I think as an advisor, I want all the advisors that are working with clients to kind of have that same experience. It puts them on the same side of the table as the client.

Don Patrick: Okay. So let’s kind of back up and just give us a big-picture overview of the entire team and the positions and roles and such.

David Gaynes: Okay. So right now I’ve got about five people. So Hope is my assistant and she kind of–operations manager. She kind of runs all the client service and an administrative part of it. Steve Reitz is an advisor and his primary responsibility is kind of like a client service advisor for the book that I acquired.

We’ve got a number of clients there and he’s primarily responsible for servicing those clients. We do a lot of joint appointments and joint work, and joint planning. But he can meet with and monitor and manage those clients on a regular basis.

Andrew, he’s been with us now just right at two years, when kind of Steve, Steve was my paraplanner for about 10 years. And then he moved into the kind of the advisor role. And then, so Andrew was hired to be the paraplanner. So Andrew, on my team, does the paraplanning and trading and, well, actually, he supervises the trading that we send requests to the trading department because we run almost all DFA models in our stuff. And then, Rain is the new advisor who just joined us and we’re working with her. She’s still kind of in the learning, how we do things, getting her up and running and all that kind of stuff. But she has a small book of business that she hopes to transition. And then her role is going to kind of be a junior advisor for a while. She’ll help me work on some of my clients. Well, she’s going to be outsourcing new clients and we’ll work that stuff jointly until she has enough experience and understands our way of doing business.

And then hopefully that she’ll transition more to a senior advisor where she’s supervising an entire book of business. So I think that’s everybody. Me, Hope, Steve, Andrew. Rain, yeah, and then Vicky who just retired and I am probably in the next month or two, I’m gonna hire another staff person who will be about 50% of their time will be admin helping Hope taking some of that stuff off her plate and the other half will be also doing, pair planning, help the paraplanning department and got a candidate that we’re probably 90% of the way down the interview process as a CFP and has had some experience doing some admin and some trading and that kind of stuff.

So, and really what I’m doing is because of the growth that we have on, that we’re hoping to achieve over the next three to five years, I’m kind of hiring ahead of need. I want to build the capacity first and then go try to fill it up.

Don Patrick: Great. And kind of circle back to that.

And so you’ve got one heck of a team. It’s well thought out. Been using the coach for 20 years. I know that’s had some impact and thinking that out, hiring, training, managing all those things. I mean, you’re running, you’re a financial planner and you’re truly a real business person and successfully doing it.

I want to walk back towards the beginning of your profession, your career, because you are a networking king. Networking is incredibly powerful. Doesn’t happen overnight. And so, just kind of, and I know you created your own BNI, I’m not sure I know why, maybe you couldn’t find one. Walk us through that and how, why you did that, how you network, how much time does it take to actually get any results from it? Just kind of give us an overview on that.

David Gaynes: Well, so there’s a couple different, there were, you know, back whatever it was, 23 years ago, I think it was 1998. And I was looking to join a networking group. Actually, Connie Meemscott here, who’s still part of our consortium, she was in a networking group and she told me about it and I went and visited her group and I really liked it.

So I said, “This is cool. this is what I want to do. I want to add this to my business development, join a networking group.” And so I visited two or three, but at the time, there’s two or three professions that every group has and one of them is a financial advisor. So unless there’s a vacancy, the only way to kind of get into a group is to build your own group.

So I spoke with the managing director of the area at the time and said, “Hey, I want to start a group. What do I need to do?” And they nurtured us. And so it took about, I want to say three or four months for us to get 10 or 12 professions. And so this is a BNI, for the people who don’t know, It’s Business Network International is what it starts for.

It’s one of the largest networking groups around the world, but they only allow one person per profession. And so we had about 10 or 11, and then we were able to be large enough to form our group, but we meet weekly, so I was just telling somebody else. Yeah, it’s been successful enough for me that it’s been worth my time to, we meet every Wednesday, I’m sorry, every Thursday from 7:00 AM ‘til 8:30.

So, what was beautiful about that is not many financial advisors are doing any business generation from 7, 8:30 in the morning. So it was a way for me to take what was normally unproductive business generation time and turning it into some business generation time. But networking is just that it’s you get to know people. One of my big mantras is all things being equal.

People want to do business with people they like and know and all things being unequal, they still would like to do it, business with people they like. So if you can get to know people, understand their business, the personal stories with them and then help each other grow their business, that’s kind of what networking is about.

But in our business, it’s like you can have some people that come into a networking group and let’s say, if they’re a CPA or attorney, if somebody needs that service, boom, they’ll do it. Right? But when you do financial planning and wealth management, that’s a longer sales cycle or a longer trust cycle.

So you really have to establish a lot of credibility by getting to know people and giving them examples of what it is you do and who your ideal client is and how you help them, and if you have some successes and that kind of stuff, then have other people provide testimonials on your behalf.

So it’s not just you telling them what it is you do and that people kind of experience what, what working with you is but it was probably a year and a half to two years before I really started getting business. It took me that long to establish credibility with the members of the group. But once you have that, then it kind of snowballs.

Don Patrick: and you do networking outside of BNI as well. Don’t you? You connect a lot of people? I mean, that’s a second part component of your networking.

David Gaynes: Yeah. Centers of Influence are sources of business for us, other attorneys, other CPAs, other networking investment bankers, people who are helping companies getting ready to sell, CFOs.

You kind of look and see who are the type of people who will see my ideal client on a regular basis, maybe for some other reason. And you just kind of get to know them a little bit more. Let them kind of get to know you. Give them, you know, what’s your value proposition is, who your ideal clients are, why they want to talk to you.

And then one of the things I always do too, is I’ll, kind of a professional courtesy, I go, “If you have any clients that you think there’s a question that I can help you answer, feel free to call me. If there’s something I can provide you, you don’t even have to refer to me. If I can help you answer the question or let you know how I would think about it or what advice I would give to the person in that situation,” I’ll give it to the professional at them, give that to the client and they really appreciate that because it’s, again, you’re trying to help first, right?

You’re not going with your hand out. To get referrals, you’re trying to provide value to them first. And if you do that, then you know, it’ll eventually, I’m a big believer in karma. Whatever you put out to the world, the more people you try to help, the more it’ll come back to you. And my experience is that’s been true.

Don Patrick: Yes. And aren’t you also sort of a matchmaker? I may be wrong, this is going way back, but it seemed to me you kind of grew a list of up to almost 100 different kinds of professions, from a landscaper to a realtor, and you would match people up. Am I thinking correctly on that?

David Gaynes: Yeah. Well, I mean, when you think about it, if you’re, let’s say you’re meeting with anybody, whether it’s a potential client or whatever, you’re really, “Hey, what’s going on in your life? What’s happening? What issues are going on? How’s your business going? What issues are you having in your business?” A lot of times, people may have, “Hey, I need to do some financial planning or wealth management,” but maybe it’s third or fourth on their list, right? So if you figure out what’s, what’s one, two and three on their list and you can help them solve those problems, then you know, the hell house, the issue that you can help them with move up on the list.

And if you have good quality people, I think a lot of people are known by the quality of referrals that you give. So if you meet some good quality people that you know can help solve other people’s problems. Well, two things are happening then, right? You’re helping that person grow their business because you’re referring business to them, right?

But you’re also helping the person that may want to do business with you, right? You’re being known as a person who has those resources and from a much more holistic opportunity, after a while you get known, “Hey, I know you know a lot of people. Do you have somebody, do you have a guy who does this,” right?

“Do you have a guy?” or, “Do you have a gal?” Right? and the way that I pass referrals, it’s pretty easy if you’re talking to somebody about an issue, you say, “Wow, if I had that issue, this is probably the first person I would call and why. Do you have somebody like that?” And sometimes they do, but if they don’t, then you say, “Well, would it be helpful if I introduced you to my person? Would you find that valuable?” And most of the time they go, “Yeah.” Right? And then I usually take it a step even further. And I said, “I tell you what, I’ll be happy to make the introduction, but you have to promise me you’re going to call them.” Because I don’t want to make the introduction if it’s not really that high priority, right?

“I value their time and I want to be effective for you and for them. So, I’ll give you the number but you have to promise me you’re going to call,” right? And that’s an easy one, right? If it’s an issue for them, they go, “Yes, I will.” Or, I’ll say, “I’ll give you the number but I’m going to have them call you if it’s okay.”

And they go, “That would be even better,” sometimes, right? So if you just take a little extra step, you can make those referrals a little stickier and more effective for them. But you have to take the time to really understand what the issue and the problem is first, and then you can go out and find a good person to solve the problem. And sometimes you don’t have a person that can solve the problem. So then you reach out to your network, say, “Hey, this is someone I’m looking for. Do you know anybody like that?” And then that just extends your network if you can find somebody, right?

Don Patrick: Yeah, that’s great advice. You are the networking king. I know that. So, you know your business intimately, the KPIs, all that, about what percent of your business do you think has been a result of your networking efforts over the years?

David Gaynes: Well, you know, I report, so part of the way that I track business is if I got business from a network, a networking source, I track that.

But then if that client then gave me a referral, right, to another client, I associate that with the, I wouldn’t have gotten that second client if I didn’t get the first referral, right?

So I have a couple, I’ve got clients that are their third or fourth-generation referrals that I still attribute to the original referral that maybe came from a networking, might come from a CPA or mortgage broker or a referral from somewhere else.

So I kind of track that. And I think, as I report, I think there’s more than half a million dollars a year that I can directly attribute to referrals that I got five and 10 years ago.

Don Patrick: Well,that’s motivation to try and learn and have the staying power in terms of networking. That’s huge. Half a million a year, my goodness, but took staying power and patience. And you’ve gotten really good at it as you explained to us.

David Gaynes: Well, I looked at it, it’s kind of like when you got in this industry, I don’t know if you remember when we were hired, we all sat through these big meetings of people who are interested and they said, what is it, something like 90% of the people are gone or don’t make it five years, right?

Don Patrick:That’s correct.

David Gaynes: And something like 2% don’t make it 10 years. So if you can just make it five years or 10 years, then you have a very high probability of being successful in this business. And then I think networking is the same way. If you just agree, like I’m not going to give up.

If something’s not working, then I’m going to fix it. Or I’m going to try to do something a different way. Never give up because networking can always be successful for anybody. You just have to be willing to commit to it.

Don Patrick: Absolutely. you’ve done such a great, do you actually put networking on your calendar or is it just part of your day?

David Gaynes: Yeah, no, so I have a networking group that I go to every week, so if I can do something weekly instead of monthly, I’ll prefer that because if I can get in front of people on a more regular basis, then I get to be more top of mind, and vice versa, and they get to be more top of mind with me as well, right?

So the more networking I can do on a consistent basis, then it becomes, it gets to be more of a habit. And you actually got to get to enjoy it. Once you get to know people, and you become friends with them, then it’s not so much a task, or, “I got to go do this.”

You look forward to seeing those people and figuring out what’s going on and learning more about their business or hearing new presentations or learning something new or meeting new people, all of that is, it’s wonderful. So I try to build it into my schedule weekly.

Don Patrick: That’s two great motivators. It’s not a drudge. You actually enjoy these people and you like getting to know them better, meeting with them, and you’re bringing in half a million a year. That’s pretty good motivation to learn how to network, I would say.

David Gaynes: Well, and every subsequent referral kind of adds on that. We have one of the best businesses in the world where if we can go out and generate 10 million dollars of assets, some new assets, and then that’ll generate 100,000 dollars, you can retain that and do it again. Well, now you just increase your revenue by 100,000, and if you can do that again, now it’s 300, it’s stackable.

So we have a recurring revenue business and a very high margin business. We are very fortunate to be in an industry that lets us do good by doing good. There’s no other industries that I think can match it across all of those, the satisfaction that we get, the autonomy that you have, and the revenue you can generate is only limited by your imagination and your ability to work hard.

Don Patrick: I absolutely agree with you. I think most people who’ve gotten this profession didn’t understand that initially, but it is, we are doing great things for people, helping families and make a darn good living at it. And as entrepreneurs, we have some control over our lives. It’s pretty cool. I agree. So let’s kind of, so I’m going to wrap up the marketing.

So you’ve got networking, referrals are two tranches. Anything else you’re doing in terms of marketing business development?

David Gaynes: No, I’m a big believer in there’s all kinds of different ways that you can do it. But at the end of the day, referrals are always are the highest, best return on investment of your time and your money.

So if you can figure out a way to get more referrals and referrals can come from not, I mean, your clients are obviously your best advocates, but you know, networking and centers of influence and people who know what you do and you can give them examples. One of the things I try to do with all of the professionals, I want them to kind of what pre-experience what it’s like to be a client.

So a lot of times I’ll take a case study or I’ll give them a hypothetical situation or these are all the things that we can do for clients. And this is how we go about doing it. So I’ll kind of peel the onion back for some of those people who are more interested so that they have a, they have more ammunition to say, “Hey, if I was you, I would call David and here’s why,” but you know, I’ve tried some other things, but I think just investing time and people and trying to generate referrals is always the best return on investment.

I know there’s some other people who do get a lot of leads from social media or SEO and some of that kind of stuff, and my experience has been I have to meet five or six of those people for every one or two referrals I meet to get the same amount of business.

Don Patrick: Makes sense. I agree. All right. Let’s dig into your business a little further. Let’s talk about tech stack. I mean, what kinds of tools are you using in your business?

David Gaynes: Okay, so our CRM is Redtail. And CRMs, I think that we’ve gone through a bunch of them over the years, but there’s always somebody leaping ahead of somebody else and doing something else.

But we like Redtail. One of the things I really like about it is it’s web-based and we’ve built a lot of workflows and stuff into it. So it works for us, but we’re constantly kind of looking at other things. And if it gets to be a pain or there’s something else that’s way more efficient to do it, we’re always open to it, but it’s gotta be either really painful or really good to make you want to move ‘cause moving CRMs is not. Not fun. Financial planning-wise, we use eMoney, direct eMoney, just because I was already using it before we came to LPL, and the two don’t go back and forth. So eMoney is pretty good as a financial planning engine and you can dial it up and down. One of the ones that I still use that you and I started was Jeff Manry and BetaVest all those years ago.

Now it’s called Clear Path, but basically, it does historical portfolio analysis, which is real similar to kind of Monte Carlo analysis, but it’s actually live returns going all the way back to 1926. I think they utilize the CRISP, the Center for Research and Securities Prices that Gene Fama and those guys helped develop at the University of Chicago.

So there’s some pretty robust data that goes back, but I like that and then we also use holistic plan for tax planning. And one of my philosophies on financial planning is I try to do everything at a kind of a 30,000-foot high level. I’m not too interested in getting too granular with a lot of the plans because we have to make so many assumptions, right?

As far as we have to assume either what we think future rates return are going to be like, or what inflation is going to be like, or what tax laws are going to be like, or really what the client’s needs are going to be. I mean, you make all these assumptions that we actually know are wrong.

We just don’t know where they’re wrong, but we have to do that in order to come up with a plan. And so the reason I’m not too concerned with getting very technical granular plans is because I’m not that concerned about having a more accurate wrong number, right? Because we know almost all the playing we do that the numbers are wrong.

We just don’t know where they’re wrong. We just need to know do they have a high probability of accomplishing our clients’ goals? And then once you have that then that’s a great tool to then make decisions from in the future and to monitor progress. I think those are the main software I mean, obviously, we use Slack for communication among our team. That’s good.

I do use MyRepChat for being able to text and confirm appointments and stuff with clients from portfolio and rebalancing, all that kind of stuff. I use the tools that LPL gives us through ClientWorks.

Don Patrick: Okay. And use a Calendaring tool where they just click on schedule an appointment or is it?

David Gaynes: Yeah, well I had another one, but then I realized we were using it for a couple of years and it was good. But, One, I guess is the only one that’s really compliant. So, but we do have that and have that on our website. And we try to put that link for in our email signature so that it’s real easy for clients to schedule time.

Don Patrick: Yeah, I think that’s a game-changer. The old days, it’d either be on the phone and looking at calendars or emailing back and forth. No, I can’t do this day. No, I can’t do this day. It seems so simple, but it really does take a lot of friction out of it. In terms of financial planning, and we’re going to dig into that a little deeper, but one of the bigger variables is their longevity.

I mean, you can only take a guess at that. Do you talk to them about their family history, that sort of thing, just to kind of, I mean, do you have a starting point for longevity?

David Gaynes: I do. I tell all my clients that I assume, I’m going to run all their plans, I’m going to assume they’re going to live to 95 unless they give me a good reason not to.

And so, for example, if somebody has a terminal illness or, “You know what, I’ve got this condition and there’s no way I’m going to make it past it.” Then maybe we’ll make some adjustments, but if I use like husband and wife, I’m going to assume they’re both going to live to 95.

And they mostly say, “There’s no way I’m going to live that long.” And I’ll say, “Well, if you could just tell me when you’re going to live, I can make the check to the undertaker bounce.” Right? But, which is kind of the ideal plan, but besides that, if it works to 95, then I know it works to 90 or 88 or anything less than that.

And if I do our job correctly, the majority of time, when you make it to 95, you’re going to still have money left in case you live to a hundred. But we update, once we run a plan, we’re still updating it every year so we can make some modifications or changes. But my default is assume longevity because if we just used average life expectancy, we would have to be wrong 50 percent of the time. And I’m not willing to be wrong that often.

Don Patrick: Well, that’s correct. And the actuarial tables are they’re old. Longevity is increasing for all kinds of improvements in health care and technology and you name it. So, I agree. I’m gonna circle back to the CRM, Redtail. You mentioned you have workflows.

So you’re actually using it as more than a Rolodex. You’re actually using it as a hub to run the business and kind of automate a lot of processes. So things don’t fall through the cracks. It sounds like.

David Gaynes: Yeah. So for example, if a client requests money, we have a workflow for that. Hope gets a request. She does it. So, we have all the steps. It’s basically just a checklist inside your CRM to make sure everything gets done in the right order. But, we have a prospect-to-client checklist. We have an annual review checklist.

We have a new transferring money in checklist, a new account checklist, a change of address checklist, all those, all the typical things that you do with just kind of make a checklist so that you make sure you’re consistently doing all the steps that you need to do in order to make it a successful outcome for just that process for your clients.

Don Patrick: Right. The clients, all they know is it’s working well. If you make a boo boo, now they really know, and the checklists prevents the mistakes and letting things drop through the cracks. All right. So let’s talk about how you’ve gotten a referral. And so what does that process look like in terms of how do you communicate with them, the kind of meetings you have or phone calls and just kind of walk us through what it’s like to become from a referral to becoming a new client at Gaynes Financial.

David Gaynes: Yeah, okay. So let’s say I got, if we get a referral from a client, then we’ll generally reach out and schedule an initial call. We’re just an introductory call where we talk a little bit more about what it is they’re looking for, how did the referral manifest, what was the impetus for it either from the conversation they were having or what they’re trying to accomplish from that. We do a little bit of data, tell them what it is we offer and if it makes sense, if we both agree, it makes sense then we’ll have a more in-depth initial meeting.

This is usually just a 15 to 20, 30-minute screening call, just to kind of get to know the person a little bit more to see if we think that they would be a good fit for us or that we’re a good fit for them. Then, our process is generally an introductory meeting. And then a discovery meeting or a fact-finding meeting and we try to combine that if we’ve done some vetting up front, then we know we can combine those in two into one meeting.

We used to try it all, always do those in the office, but since COVID, we’ve been able to do a lot of those more so over Zoom, if need be. We just collect the information upfront. Then we’ll take the information, design, do some analysis, and kind of get back together, share some of the analysis that we’ve done, and come up with our, “These are our observations and these are our findings. And then these are some recommendations that we would recommend.” And if they are amenable and it seems like that’s a good fit, then they like what we did and it’s going to do that. And then that’s when we schedule the implementation. And this is how we implement the plan that you’ve signed off on.

Don Patrick: If I recall correctly, you used to have, I think your initial meeting was kind of a fit meeting or are we a good fit for each other? And you would kind of send them away to let them think about it. And you would confer with your team to also confirm that it’s a good fit. Do you still do that?

David Gaynes: Well, a lot of that screening happens at that initial meeting.

Don Patrick: Okay.

David Gaynes: So before the initial phone call, so we’ve kind of done some screening there, and then what happens is at our Monday meeting when we have our team meeting, we talk about all the things that are going on, and then we’ll talk about these are the people that are kind of in the pipeline on the opportunities list and this is the situation just ‘cause I want everybody on the team to kind of know who they are and what the potential is. Everybody, I’m a firm believer that everybody on your team is in sales. If they have any interaction whatsoever with clients, then it’s their job to make that a pleasant experience, which is what would lead to a referral.

So they can have an impact on the sales process. So we do discuss it a little bit.

Don Patrick: Okay. I like that tip. Everybody’s in sales and it’s a client service and creating a great experience. I love that. So now we’re an existing client. I know you segment your clients and, I assume, I shouldn’t say this.

I’m assuming you have different service levels, but so what does it look like? Let’s say for an A client, what does the cadence look like throughout the year? What kinds of service–

David Gaynes: Well, so we use, I guess it’s FMG suite to send out weekly emails, it’s got the markets and I tell all the clients I go, “I’m not as concerned. I’m sending you this information.” It does have some market information that it’s just more for if you’re interested in that kind of stuff, but we have, there’s recipes and there’s a riddle and health tip and all that kind of stuff.

But, and I don’t care if you delete it or if you read it. I just wanted, the reason I’m sending it is so that you have something from me in your inbox every week so that if there’s something comes up that you think we need to discuss or talk about, that you can reply to that and ask us the question or say, “Can we get 30 minutes on the phone or can I ask you a quick question?”

Something like that, right? That’s the primary reason for that is I tell them I want to have something that’s there so that when something comes up that you think we might be able to help with then, you know, that’s an easy way to reply to us. We tell them we can certainly meet more often if you would like so it’s kind of up to them. But we want to have at least annual reviews where we update your plan, we review performance, anything like that.

We kind of reach out at least once a quarter, just to for some reason to talk to them, whether it’s birthday cards, whether it’s anniversary, whether there’s just something going on, we just want to have some touches in there. Again, if there’s some opportunity that we can help them with it, it’ll come out, but it’s really, we want to see them once a year, if they want more often, and we also tell them, “Hey, if there’s anything happening in your life that you think we should know about, just give us a call. We’re here, we’re not charging you, unlike a CPA or attorney, we’re not charging you by the hour, you can call, we can have as many meetings as you want, or as many phone calls as you want, just let us know.”

But it’s really not, I mean, it’s not that intensive. It’s up to them. Some clients want to have quarterly calls. But after they have two or three quarterly calls, they go, “Well, we could probably do this once a year.” Or if they, something’s happening and they just, let’s have, because we’re pretty accessible, if they call, we can usually get them in within the week, or if it’s just a quick phone call, we can usually do it within a day or two.

If it’s a meeting, we can usually do it within a week or so, depending on the urgency of what the issue is.

Don Patrick: So in terms of these touches, are they scheduled in Redtail or are they, I mean, how do you make sure they don’t fall through the cracks?

David Gaynes: So we keep a list and in RedTail, we also know when their last review was so that we come up about a month or two before their next review to reach out to them to just have them schedule it.

And we also send out emails at the beginning of the year for everybody to, if they want to schedule and get with us early in the year, we try to get as many reviews done early in the year because that’s when you identify any opportunities that are going to happen in the rest of the year. But obviously, not everybody gets done in the first year.

So we kindly track of all the double A’s and A clients that we have, who do we need to see? Who have we not had a review yet? When was their last review? So we’ll talk about that at the meetings, our weekly meetings, and then we’ll usually bring that up once a month just to, you know, status where we are.

We do send birthday cards out, so those go out automatically, and then their birthday shows up in Redtail. So a lot of times we’ll shoot them a note, but really, I mean, if we’re looking at the portfolio or if there’s something going on in the markets, we’ll blast that out and say, “Let us know if you’d like to talk about it.”

We also, we will schedule things like if we know when we do a review, hey, they have a house that they have on the market and they expect it to be on the market in the year or within the month and maybe, so we’ll put a three-month follow-up. “Hey, how’s it going with your mom’s house sale,” or, “Hey, I’m going to retire this year,” or “I’m inheriting some money, but the estate is in process.”

So we’ll just put those follow-ups specifically for each client on Redtail as a known follow-up. And then when we get to it, it may be that we’ve already spoken with a client because something happened beforehand, so we know we don’t have to call them, but if not, then one of us just reaches out and say, “Hey, we just had you on the calendar to follow up.

I know when we’ve reviewed, you talked about this CD coming due,” or something like that. “Is that something we can help you with?” Just kind of being proactive from that standpoint.

Don Patrick: In terms of your financial planning, so you’re using eMoney and ClearPath, formerly BetaVest, do you present these on the screen? Do you give them handouts, PDFs, what does that look like?

David Gaynes: Yeah, I always do it on the screen because I tell them, “Look, it’s a very collaborative process. I’m going to walk you through some of the assumptions, but we can change some of these if you want to.” After we’ve had the meeting and stuff, I said, “If you would like a printout, I can print it out and I can either send it to you as a PDF or if you would like a hard copy, we can send it with a copy of the summary letter from the meeting along with performance reports.” But I only give it to ’em if they want it. Generally, most clients are just at a high level. They wanna know, “Oh look, I’m on course, I’m on track. Things still look good.” So we provide printouts for people who want them or PDFs for people who want them.

But we save the PDF of the plan and everything that we do in their review folder. So we have, you know, every time we have a review, we have a review folder and we keep everything in that folder that we went with them, whether it was a social security analysis, whether it was performance reports from their investments, notes for the agenda for the meeting, statements of each of the accounts that we’re going to review in case we just need to pull it up, it’s there.

But yeah, as opposed to, I used to give everybody these printouts and it’s evolved over time to nobody wants paper anymore. Most of the time, if they want it, they want a PDF, but most of them don’t even want it. So I would say probably maybe 15, 20% of the people will request the summary.

Don Patrick: Yeah, that sounds about right. So after a review meetings, do you do any kind of follow-up and email? Kind of summary?

David Gaynes: Yeah. So I haven’t, I’m excited to try to implement Zox. I’ve signed up for it. I just haven’t implemented it yet. But what we do is now so we have an agenda right for the meeting of everything we’re going to cover and generally, that agenda is just the regular stuff that we have to do.

We update their plan. We review performance and fees. We talk about any, if they have something like annuities that have benefits or something, we go over that with them and how it works, just a review of how it works and what it costs, and how it’s supposed to fit into their plan. But we also send out a review ahead of time your reviews coming up.

“Is there anything that you want to add or that you want to make sure we cover?” And those are usually the first two or three or four agenda items that we cover is whatever they want to discuss because this meeting is as much for them as it is for us to be able to check some boxes and make sure that we’re staying compliant and up to date with their situation.

Send a review letter. So after that agenda, we’ve checked off and I’ve taken all the notes and then I and Andrew, the financial planner, we get back together and we develop a review letter. It’s just some review summary. “These are all things we talked about. Here are the follow-up items. Here’s what we’re going to do. Here’s what you’re going to do.” And we send it out to them. Most of the time that’s now going out by email, but occasionally for some of the older clients who don’t want email, they like receiving it in the mail. So we’ll send it. We’ll send it a hard copy.

Don Patrick: Okay. Yeah, I think having a written summary of the meeting is one, it’s professional and it re-emphasizes the importance of the meeting. So I think that’s great. So let’s dig into your business a little more. you’re running a big business. You have a lot of team members.

From the outside looking in, It looks like a pretty smooth operation. Obviously, when you’re in the middle of it, maybe it doesn’t look that way, but, and we’ve talked quite a bit about your business and the team. And the fact that you’re having monthly or weekly team meetings is a big deal. Obviously, communication is good.

So how does the team communicate? Who’s really running it? Who’s managing, whom, who’s doing the hiring? There’s a lot of questions asked, but so kind of give us a sense of that. It just seems like you’re running a very smooth business and I know there’s always challenges.

David Gaynes: Well, I mean, every business has challenges on a regular basis. It’s how you do it. But the team meeting is good. We have that because I want everybody to know kind of what everybody else is doing. So the agenda of that is these are the meetings we had last week. Are there any follow-up action items that we need to do?

These are the meetings that are coming up, what steps, or what do we need to be able to prepare for these meetings ahead of time? We go through, are there any compliance or issues that we have to address from the client works that’s out there, and then we’ll let each, “Hey, so what are you working on that we need to be up to speed on.” We go around, let everybody talk about that.

And then, like for example, Andrew, updates. He and I get together and go over all, update all the opportunities, like what’s the next steps. Who do we need to call? What’s next? How do we move this along? Or is this something that we think is just going to go away? So let’s drop it. Let’s not pursue that or let’s move those people over to, let’s just drip on them once a quarter because they’re apparently not ready to do anything at this time.

Right? Whatever happens. We review cash positions, any money that’s come in, if it isn’t in cash, then how does it need to be invested? So I like a little bit of transparency. I want everybody to be able to look to see, to know what everybody else is doing.

Just kind of makes us more comprehensive as a team or more effective, I think, as a team. And we deal with any problems or issues or objectives that are like, oh, okay, how do we solve this problem? Or at what point do we need to escalate it? And what’s the escalation?

So, we’ll do that. We can usually get most of these things resolved. I don’t send a whole lot of stuff to Andrews or to IFG for the team, but there are occasions when we have to do that. But part of it is by design too from a capacity standpoint, from an asset management strategy, from a financial planning strategy. We try to design it with the overall, what is it the client really wants or where we need to provide the client, but how can we do it in the most efficient way possible and how do we do it the same over and over so that we’re not, everything’s not a one-off scenario, right?

In our business, we’re trying to customize as much stuff as we can. So there’s always going to be a little bit of customization, but the more consistent you can be with your processes and the way that you do things, the more repeatable I think it becomes and the less problems.

Don Patrick: So it sounds like you have a great communication with the team, obviously, and the team meetings, everybody’s on the same page, and you also are process driven, which streamlines things, again, and make sure things don’t fall through the cracks and makes life easier for everybody. So in terms of prospects, who do you see? Do you run with that or have you delegated that out? What does that look like?

David Gaynes: I do most of the prospecting, but I have delegated it, the running of the process, the keeping up with it. So we usually have about 30 minutes after our meeting. If it’s just Andrew and I that we go through and we review all the opportunities and the next steps, right?

And then if there’s any followup from things that need to be prepared that week, he and I are, we get together on that too, so a lot of times we’ll put that into that same meeting. But we are looking at that weekly, the prospects and next steps, and how to move it forward. And no, unfortunately, clients aren’t always excited to get the business to us as we are about getting the business.

So we just have to do it at their speed or I’m not a big, I’m not a hard sale guy. I want them to do it when they think it’s the right time, but I want to give them every opportunity to do it until they get sick of hearing from me.

Don Patrick: Right. So you’ve delegated most of the processes with the prospects, but ultimately you’re the guy in terms of–

David Gaynes: Yeah, so like from an advisor standpoint, I think this came out of maybe Bernstein, the good thing about the consortium is we get so much information and we get to share it and all that kind of stuff but one of the things that I retained is that there’s the three highest the highest paid things that we can do as an advisor, it’s number one is meeting with clients.

Number two is meeting with prospective new clients. And number three is meeting with centers of influence or professionals who see your ideal client who can refer you to business, right? So those are the highest, best use of our time. Other than those three things, you should either delegate, right? As much as you can, but as your business and your staff starts growing, then some of that time, some of your time needs to transition into developing your staff, managing people, which is the tough part of every organization. Nobody’s ever really taught how to manage people.

Don Patrick: Right. But it is a learnable skill and obviously, you’ve learned how to do it. And so I’m gathering that all your team reports directly to you or is that not the case?

David Gaynes: Currently that’s the way it is. And we’re doing a lot of like leadership development. I don’t know if I’ve landed to share with you, but we are doing a monthly wild spark.

Don Patrick: Yes. We did that with our team a couple of years ago.

David Gaynes: Yeah, so, I think that’s good because they see we’re investing in them, but once a month we’re, we cover some leadership subject or whether it’s customer service or think like an owner or understanding someone’s story or understanding personality types and all that kind of stuff that we just have to, we get to experience over time because I am ultimately what I want is I want them to be in charge of their department and then for them to manage people underneath them. But right now we’re kind of a flat hierarchy.

Don Patrick: Okay. So you are the manager, you’re the trainer and you’re teaching them how to become managers and leaders. It sounds like with wild spark ‘cause that’s really what it’s about. And you do reviews like annual or quarterly reviews with your team?

David Gaynes: Yeah. Quarterly Reviews and Annual Assessments.

Don Patrick: Okay. And how does that work? Do you have kind of a questionnaire that you complete or they complete? And obviously, I’m assuming ongoing, you have conversations. You don’t wait for a quarterly or annual assessment. But what does that look like?

David Gaynes: So, I mean, I involve the team in the business plan, business plan process. So we do a business plan presentation, usually November, December, on what our big targets are going to be for the year. And then we take those targets, and then we set targets within each of their areas that we think are going to help the company achieve its targets, anything that makes us bigger, better, faster, stronger, more efficient, more valuable to clients, anything like that. So we kind of set targets for them on what they want to achieve. Sometimes it’s, “Hey, I want to achieve, I want to get this designation,” or, “I want to learn more about this,” or, “This is an area we need more training in.”

So for each of them, we set annual, we do a kind of an annual targets and plans within for each of them. And then they set their kind of key performance things and we check in on those quarterly within the team meeting. So everybody kind of knows where everybody is. But then we do, I’ll also set up, usually I have a bonus program that’s built for, “Hey, these are some things over and above.” What we’re trying to do that if we can, “Hey, here’s a project that if we can get this project done in the quarter, that’s worth this bonus.”

Don Patrick: So you’re tying the bonus directly in. So Gaynes Financial has an overall business plan, view the plan at the end of the year with the entire team.

And then essentially, each team member kind of has their own business plan that helps roll up into the Gaynes Financial business plan.

David Gaynes: Yeah, I’m a big proponent of having everybody rowing in the same direction, right? I want like for them to accomplish their goals, I want them to know how that connects directly to the company achieving its goals, right? And how does them accomplishing their business goals help them accomplish their personal goals, right? ‘Cause everything’s intertwined, right? Business is personal, personal is business. And the reason we do business is to achieve something that we want to do personally or professionally on our own.

How do we integrate those together so that everybody is growing to the extent they want to grow? What are they doing that they like doing? What is it they don’t like doing? Is there anything they think we can be doing better as a company? Where do they see that we can improve? Is there anything that they would like to stop doing and why? What do you want to do more of, and why? And we try to build those things into the plan. I want to help them, I don’t want anybody to dread coming to work, right? I want them, and I also spend a little bit of time sharing some, “This is what we’re doing for this client. This is the impact we can have.”

I want them directly to see how it impacts them. And then we have, I have this, for you, for anybody who walks by my office, you’ll see we have a big wooden spoon cane there. And so once a month we do things like we call it the wooden spoon moment.

And basically, a small spoon is we use small spoons to feed ourselves, right? But large spoons are meant to serve others. So me being as cheesy as I am, I went into Amazon and got a wooden spoon and hung it out there. So we talk about, what have you done to serve others or what kind of–if we get positive feedback from a client.

“Hey, I had a great call. Hope is wonderful. She spent an hour with me talking about situation and it was just really nice.” or, “Hey, Andrew went outta his way. It was extremely helpful helping me solve this issue that you guys don’t normally deal with.” or Steve. So I try to recognize that, just kind of I want them to reinforce the positive that we’re doing and that when they do something and a client acknowledges it, I want them to–I try to prop them up in front of the other team members so that there’s that recognition.

Don Patrick: I love that. It’s a visual and it’s always there front of mind. So this just, everything you’re explaining goes back to great communication. As you mentioned, transparency, everybody’s on the same team rowing together, but you’re very intentional about what you’ve been doing in terms of managing and leading and training your team, which is a big deal.

And I think that’s why on the outside looking in, it looks like it’s a pretty well, smooth-running machine that you’ve built, David, but it’s ongoing. It doesn’t stop.

David Gaynes: Well, I think, one of the things that, we’re fortunate about being in this business, but you know, one of the perspectives that I have is it’s just as important for me to help the staff achieve their goals and what they want personally and professionally and job satisfaction because if they like what we do and that they realize there’s a purpose to what we do and that we’re actually having a positive impact on other people, then it gives them that sense of purpose that what we’re doing makes a difference and what they’re doing makes a difference.

And we have the ability, this business, to not only help those people, but, help the people that work with us and deliver what the clients want. And again, it gets back to that kind of win, win, win scenario, right? If we can, if they’re happy at work and they enjoy what they’re doing and they feel that there’s a purpose in it, then they want to get up in the morning and come do it. Not that everything that we do is exciting. Filling out spreadsheets or doing reports. And, but some of that stuff is just, is necessary. But it’s the end value that we’re providing and that we really are making a difference for people and that what they do matters. I think that’s the big thing.

Don Patrick: Absolutely correct. The fact that they get it, they know they’re doing every little chore, whether they like it or not, whether you like it or not, is ultimately for the inclined, their family, their goals, and that’s a wonderful thing to get up and go to work for.

And then knowing that everything you’re doing is ultimately for the inclined, and you communicate it, you live it, you demonstrate it, very powerful. Very impressive, Dave.

David Gaynes: Well also, I want them to know I care about them just as much as I care about the clients. Your work family is still your family, right?

They’re your family at work. And life happens to them just like it happens to our clients and we wanna be there to help them navigate whatever happens and help them achieve their goals. So if we can do that, then that makes the company more successful.

So you want to have good people who are doing good by doing good.

Don Patrick: Absolutely. Love it. Well, we’re going to wrap this up a little bit. I’ve got a couple more questions for you. And the first is not really a question, but for you to use three words to describe your talents and strengths.

David Gaynes: Yeah. I think in order to be really good at this business and to be a good, to lead a good team, you have to have empathy. So I think the people who are most successful are the ones who have empathy for the people that they’re working with and the people that they’re serving.

So that’s one of them. I think optimism is another one. I’m an internal optimist. I think if we have the ability and we’re very fortunate to be in this industry, but things are constantly getting better and it’s not that there aren’t challenges along the way or issues that we have to deal, but you know what, we’re fortunate to be living in the time that we’re living in and I’m a firm believer of it. We’re lucky to be here. And I kind of equate, somebody once, you know, they were trying to figure out what’s the secret to happiness. And I think the secret to happiness is gratitude. It’s, at the end of the day, people who are grateful for wherever they are, or whatever they are by definition happier people. And the flip side of that is true. If you think that, you know, if people who are ungrateful or think that they’re wronged or they’re just naturally unhappy people. So I think maybe empathy, optimism, and gratitude are probably my three.

Don Patrick: I would agree with you. I know. And before I forget, I need to acknowledge, as a founding member, what you have done and contributed in the time and effort into the consortium as a whole. You have been on the advisory board from the very beginning for 20 years. That’s four times a year, typically about a four-hour meeting, without pay, you might get a dinner or something out of it.

That’s amazing. It’s 20 years, four times a year. And you and Rich Lombardi were also instrumental in forming a new dimensions, which are the dimensional portfolios and the investment committee. And that’s been a monthly meeting for almost 20 years as well. That’s a big deal. That says everything about you. And it says everything about the kind of people who are in the consortium and can’t thank you enough. We all can’t thank you enough.

David Gaynes: Well, I mean, I get as much out of it as I give. So, and that’s really one of the beautiful things about our consortium is that not only do we all play well in the sandbox together, but we are all truly invested and happy to see other people succeed and I love the study groups.

I love the retreat. I love getting together with other advisors and talking shop. I love figuring out how I can help somebody else whether it’s other advisors or other team members or other staff, whatever challenges they have, just putting our head together. It’s kind of like efficient markets, right?

The more minds you have, the more people you have providing input, the better outcome you’re going to have.

Don Patrick: That’s a great analogy.

David Gaynes: And so, and thank you for all the time and effort that you’ve put into making it successful because I know without having your leadership over the years, all of this stuff would have never existed.

So, we drafted you. We asked you to step up when you didn’t have to, but it wouldn’t be here without you. So thank you for everything you’ve done as well.

Don Patrick: Well, it’s the same motivations as you. I love watching people succeed, be happy and it’s just, it’s as rewarding as it gets. So, one last question and that is tell us something about yourself that others don’t know.

David Gaynes: Let’s see. What is something that no one, well, I won a dunk contest at halftime of a Hawks game.

Don Patrick:Oh my gosh.

David Gaynes:When I was a junior. I think it was a junior, I think it was between my sophomore and my junior year in college. There was Doc Rivers and some of the Hawks, they were doing a dunk contest to benefit autism and that kind of stuff.

So it started out, there was about a hundred people that went down to Georgia State and all competed. And there were two sides of it and everybody had to do all these, they had to do two or three dunks on one side, two or three dunks on the other side. And I actually came out of that competition.

And only the top five got to go to the finals, which was going to be halftime of a Hawks game. And I wish there was a video of it, but there’s not. But anyway, so I actually was at the halftime of the Hawks game, and I won the dunk contest. And to top it all off, I realized that my ex-girlfriend was there at the game. And so she got to watch me win with whoever she was with at the time, that was just a cherry on the top.

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

David Gaynes: And I can’t dunk anymore.

Don Patrick: Yes, we all know that. Dave, this is fantastic, learned so much and a lot of great takeaways from this and taking your time for this podcast. Very grateful and thank you.

David Gaynes: Well, I’m happy to do it if it helps anybody else. And if anybody who’s listening ever has any questions or if there’s any way I can be helpful, please reach out. That’s why we’re here.

Don Patrick: Thanks. See you, Dave.

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.