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: Welcome to episode number three, everybody. Today, we’re going to meet with Paul Peeler, who is a partner, member advisor, Integrated Financial Group located in the worldwide headquarters of IFG in Atlanta, Georgia. First, we’re going to learn a little bit about Paul, his personal life, his business and professional life, his pros and cons, challenges, successes, and then we’re going to get into the main topic. Paul’s very unique. He is outsourced 90, roughly 90% of his business operations. We’ll learn what works, what doesn’t work with that, how he’s done it. Very unique. So let’s dig in. Paul, tell us a little bit about you, your family, and your background.

Paul Peeler: Well, first of all, Don, thanks for having me. It’s a pleasure to be here. My wife, Michelle, she’s put up with me for 32 years. I’ve got a son and daughter, both married and they both live in the Atlanta metro area. So we’re lucky to have them close by.

Don Patrick: That’s great. Yeah. 32 years. I agree. Michelle’s awesome.

Paul Peeler: I hit it out of the park on that one.

Don Patrick: Anything else that you want to share about your background? I know you love the I Can Camp and things like that and hobbies and such.

Paul Peeler: Oh, okay. Yeah. So I decided a few years ago I was going to spend a little less time on business and a bit more time on things that I enjoy, and one of those things is I try to get out, outdoors as often as possible.

I’ve got a camp buddy. We get out probably about once a month into the North Georgia mountains, we get off the grid and if you actually look on my website, you’ve seen some videos there. Usually, those videos are taken from those campsites. So, spent a lot of time outdoors and doing hiking and some other hobbies as well. But yeah, thanks for bringing that up.

Don Patrick: Nice. Hey, your website is fantastic. Those videos, if you can give everybody the URL to your website. Incredible videos that he does. Very personal. They’re fantastic. As well as all the PR work that you’ve done. Yeah, some great interviews and things.

Paul Peeler: Thank you. My website is planlifenow.org and actually, it was Integrated Studio team that helped to rebrand that a few years ago, working with Heather Hawthorne at the time did a fantastic job with the branding. I had done some videos already and those were put on, but we just started a new video series called Your Questions Answered, where I actually go through questions that actual clients ask in real meetings, and I answer them in a video format, and it’s kind of personal, pretty relaxed outside of the office, and the feedback from clients and other people that have seen those has been really positive. Hopefully, we can continue that.

Don Patrick: Yeah, it’s great work, and it’s real, it’s honest, and you’re really reaching out to potential clients, and I love answering the questions you get from your meetings with clients. This is real, and people are asking those questions. So how did you get started in the profession?

Paul Peeler: How did I get started in the profession? It was by happenstance, Don, I was a graduate from college and was looking for a job like most people do. I was recruited by a mutual fund company. It was called First Investors at the time.

I think it was bought by Forrester’s and whatnot. So they’re not around anymore, but I was paid to do mutual funds. And interestingly enough, coming out of college, I didn’t even know what a mutual fund was, but that led me to work with Ameriprise, which that used to be the old IDS financial services, maybe, or financial services veterans may recognize that name, but that was the forerunner of Ameriprise.

And I worked with Charles Schwab, then migrated over to a subsidiary of Harris Bank doing fee-based RIA work. And then late 2005, I decided to open up my own shop. Yeah. And settled in with IFG at the time.

Don Patrick: Yeah. And that was great. So the OIDS Ameriprise, they had a tremendous financial planning trading program, if I recall correctly.

Paul Peeler: And they did. They did. And particularly the office that I worked out of coming in not knowing hardly anything, even after selling mutual funds for a while, didn’t know anything about financial planning. They did a tremendous job of weekly and I believe it was, if my memory serves, bi-weekly case breakdown where we would come in, take a look at actual cases that people were working on, do a breakdown in terms of how to best help the clients and do some product training at the time as well. So they did a tremendous job on that.

Don Patrick: Yeah. I’ve noticed that anybody that has had the Ameriprise background like you have had, I know that they’re good financial planners. They’ve had a good base, good training.

Paul Peeler: Yeah. they still have a fantastic platform for financial planning.

Don Patrick: Yeah. And you’re also doing some things, share with us is somewhat unique, I think we have a few in the consortium with the ROI, and tell us a little bit about how you’ve incorporated that and what that’s about.

Paul Peeler: Sure. So I’m a big fan of an author. He’s been in the industry for a long time. His name is Mitch Anthony. I own all of his books and have really worked to incorporate a lot of his philosophies around really digging into people’s lives and finding out where they’re coming from rather than focusing on just amounts and accounts with their finances.

And several years ago, he partnered with Steve Sandusky to roll out an initiative called ROL Advisor. That’s called a return on life advisor, and really focusing on how we can use money to help improve people’s lives and focusing on the return on life. In other words, how is the money and the resources that a client has or have, how is that supporting the things they want out of life rather than just focusing on the internal rate of return and the traditional financial planning metrics? It’s been enormously successful. The clients that are engaged in that process are quite engaged. The meetings are very impactful and we’re able to set a great course and I’ve been very pleased with integrating into that program.

Don Patrick: So, if I recall correctly, it took you at least a year to really hone this and get the integration in and get the vocabulary down. But I think I recall early on one of the first potential clients that you implemented this with, if I remember correctly, was an engineer.

Paul Peeler: So there was an engineer, but actually one of my favorite stories around that whole process was actually, it was, I’m not going to go into her name or anything like that because she’s an executive with a well-known company here in Atlanta, kind of a type A person, and came in my office with her husband and we were kind of going through her situation. I asked her some, she and her husband, some pointed questions and she was getting visibly emotional around the answers to these questions because I don’t think she was prepared to answer them from a personal standpoint.

I think she had just had the normal financial planning conversations around when do you want to retire, how much money you want, how much can you save, things of that nature, but we kind of dug into the ins and outs of the why and why that was important to her and what were the defining moments in her life that brought her to those realizations and when we were wrapping up the meeting, she stood up and she had tears in her eyes and she walked around my desk in my office and she hugged me and she said, “Thank you for hearing me.”

And that was a very powerful moment. And I’ve got similar stories. Actually, as I’m telling that story, two or three other similar stories are kind of flooding back into my memory. But it’s a great tool to be able to get to what’s important to clients and why it’s important to them, and what’s going on in that background that brings them to where they are today.

Don Patrick: That is so powerful. And I mean, that is the essence of what financial planning is about and the whole ROL program. Really, you’ve always been good at it, but it really hones it, and systematizes it ’cause it’s about people’s, their life, their dreams, their challenges, their families.

Paul Peeler: Yeah. It was, honestly, I think most really good financial planners try to do that. at least certainly in the consortium. We may not use the same language, but certainly the same concepts. I think the great financial players that we have are doing similar things. What the ROL program allowed is for me to just systematize it so it wasn’t hit or miss that I was able to apply a consistent process of these, this type of discovery and implementation for everyone and not just kind of as it came up.

Don Patrick: Fantastic. So why don’t you briefly describe your business to us.

Paul Peeler: Sure. Well, you started out or just mentioned that the ROL, the return on life program. I do really focus on life-centered financial planning. I always leave with planning any sort of products or investment imputation really flows from a plan.

And again, that’s not specific to me. Many great planners that we have in Integrated Financial Group also do the same thing. I serve, I want to say about 60 families and my sweet spot, I would say, is the high mass affluent to the low net worth, the family steward type that just really want to make wise and prudent decisions for their families.

I was an advocate of, you know, early on some of the work that Duncan McPherson did around, intentionally staying small. And so I’ve put a lot of effort into doing that as well. And that’s reflected in the number of families that I serve.

Don Patrick: What is the typical meeting process with a prospective client. How’s that work? How many meetings, what are the meetings like? Just share a little bit of that with us.

Paul Peeler: Sure. So someone reaches out, they’re referred or however they reach out, they indicate that they have a problem that they want to talk about. Can they come in or have a video chat and talk about their situation?

We will have, I always offer a what I call a second opinion meeting. They’ll come in and we’ll discuss their situation. And then if they want to go further in terms of whether or not they want to work with me, then we’ll go through really what they’re looking for in a long-term financial advisor.

I’ll go through my philosophy and how I work, what I do, the processes that I use. And the whole idea is to see if what they perceive that they need and want is what I offer because if it’s not a good fit, why move forward? So I always tell them, “We’re going to decide if we’re a good fit here. We’re not going to make any decisions right now. You need to determine on your end if it makes sense. I’ll be determined if it makes sense.” And then, usually after the meeting about a week later, we do a follow-up via phone call and we determine if we want to move forward. If we do, we set up a discovery meeting where we talk about their resources and that’s the different take on what’s called a data gathering.

‘Cause, you know, nobody wants to gather data, but if we can have a discovery meeting, that can be fun. And so we do a discovery meeting. Then shortly thereafter, after we’ve been able to do the data input into our financial planning platform, we get back together for a collaboration meeting.

And what that is, is myself and the clients get together and we talk about good options for moving forward. Because, as you know Don, rarely is there only one way to do something, okay. Sometimes there is, but often there are multiple good ways to get where someone wants to be.

And in 20 years, we’ll know what the absolute best way was. But rather than me dictating on high what a client should and needs to do, we work together to come up with the next action steps and what the client feels great about. And then we put those in an action plan, move forward. And then we have periodic meetings throughout the year to make sure they stay on track with their planning, their investment management, their insurance documents, their legacy documents, things like that. Does that help answer the question?

Don Patrick: That’s great. That’s perfect. And how do you charge your clients?

Paul Peeler: The majority of my clients pay asset management fees. That’s traditional through the industry, but I do have a minimum. And if individuals want to utilize financial planning services without the asset management or the asset piece really doesn’t meet that minimum, then they can pay a financial planning fee on top of that. But usually, it’s a combination of asset management fees and financial planning fees.

Don Patrick: A combination.

Paul Peeler: Yeah.

Don Patrick: Okay. So they do a financial planning flat fee with, you’ve got a minimum, then there’s an asset management fee.

Paul Peeler: Yeah. Actually, Don, I actually misspoke. If someone doesn’t meet the financial planning fee minimum through asset management fees, then it’s a combination of. If someone meets the financial planning minimum through asset management fees, then they’re not going to get another separate financial planning charge.

Don Patrick: Got you. So they, this for comprehensive financial planning as well as asset management.

Paul Peeler: It’s all baked in. Yeah. I know a lot of planners go into breaking out, but I think my clients just enjoy the simplicity of just one, one fee and having it taken out of their accounts.

Don Patrick: Yeah. In the old days, we used to call that the offset. So they don’t meet the minimum with the asset.

Paul Peeler: Right?

Don Patrick: So what kind of software do you, what kind of technology do you use?

Paul Peeler: Sure. I’m a user of eMoney. eMoney is a very robust program, and they’ve done a fantastic job of rolling out features, particularly this year. But being able to, in client meetings, interact with different what ifs on the Decision Center, being able to generate sophisticated reports, being able to model multiple different cash flow situations has really proven invaluable. And I know that there are a lot of other providers out there, but being able to, you know, if a client is asking, “Well, what if I do this?” Or “What if I do that? What if I retire early? What if I do a Roth conversion? What if I take social security early? What if I delay it?” eMoney just does a great job of rather than me answering from the hip, being able to say, “Well, I don’t know, let’s see what the numbers say.” And then we can come back and see what those decisions, the impact, long-term impact those decisions have on their financial situation, and usually they can make a good choice from the cells on how to proceed.

Don Patrick: So you’re doing this live on a screen with the client and the client’s really essentially empowered and driving the whole thing.

Paul Peeler: Yeah, absolutely. And what’s funny is I have a few clients, when they’re in my office, we’ll actually take the mouse out of my hand and start clicking things around. And I’ll let them because the more, you know, people learn and people engage in different ways and one of those ways is through tactile engagement and if people can take ownership through actually manipulating a mouse and kind of going through that on their own, I say let them have at it. It’s great and it generates tremendous collaboration and buy-in.

Don Patrick: Well, they’re driving it. They’re making decisions. You’re not telling them what to do. You’re just showing them the outcomes.

Paul Peeler: Yeah, it’s their plan at that point. Not my plan that I’m telling them they need to do.

Don Patrick: Exactly. That’s so, it’s so powerful, technology. So I got in there. Now, do you provide a written report following this or a PDF, or what happens?

Paul Peeler: So I used to provide a written report until I realized that none of my clients wanted that.

Don Patrick: No, they don’t.

Paul Peeler: None. None. I don’t mean a few. I mean, none. And so what I do is immediately afterward, and when I say immediately, I mean in the next, at least in the next few days after the meeting, I provide a written summary of everything we talked about as well as any documents that we looked at. I might provide a short summary, but yeah, I don’t provide a financial plan. They don’t want it. They just want to know what do I do from here and the action items provide that.

Don Patrick: So it’s kind of a bullet-pointed executive summary type.

Paul Peeler: Exactly.

Don Patrick: Yeah. That’s all people want. I’ve always said if I go to my doctor’s office, I don’t want a hundred-page report. What’s—with choices and why do you recommend it?

Paul Peeler: And actually that was the impetus behind me generating that document is my dentist. Several years ago, I left and they provided me this printout of what we talked about, what they found, and what they recommended. It was just a one-pager. And I thought, man, this is great.

And it was more, how can I recreate this in my business? Because as a patient I really liked that and I’m sure–and so I just stole that from him. Now, I know a lot of other professionals were doing that already, but I wasn’t. And so when I saw, when I was a recipient of that, it made it a big impact on me. So I just started using it in my business.

Don Patrick: Great. And those of you listening, we do have in our library a template for that type of a simple follow-up, and it’s all bullet-pointed, super simple, very powerful, very professional as well.

Paul Peeler: I need to take a look at that then.

Don Patrick: Stole it from David Gaines.

Paul Peeler: Perfect.

Don Patrick: We all steal from each other.

Paul Peeler: Absolutely.

Don Patrick: A good idea, right?

Paul Peeler: Yeah. Anything that comes from David, I need to take a look at.

Don Patrick: So what other types of technology tools do you use in your practice?

Paul Peeler: Well, I use just the big ones. I use Redtail. That’s the engine behind all the client servicing stuff. I used eMoney, which we’ve already talked about. I use ROL Advisor, which is interactive and in terms of client services. Not necessarily client-facing, but we use e-signature, anything that streamlines, we do that. But from a financial planning standpoint, it’s primarily eMoney and from client management, it’s Redtail.
Don Patrick: CRM. Do you use a workflow? How do you use your CRM?

Paul Peeler: Yeah. So, we use workflows heavily, started that a while back, but so anything that I’m going to be doing more than once, we create a workflow around. And the reason is so I have great people that work with me that do those types of things, but I don’t want to always assume there’ll be a route.

So I don’t want to have to train them to redo things. So we will workflows into Redtail and pretty much anything, again, that has to be done more than once. We invest the time to create a workflow in Redtail to systematize the process, to make sure nothing falls through the cracks. And honestly, we are constantly, even our existing workflows, we are constantly tweaking those to make sure that they actually reflect reality and how that actually, how the processes actually work on the ground day to day with the clients.

Don Patrick: I mean, workflows are sort of a simplified processes and procedures or procedure manual. Automated, but you’re right, they’re always being tweaked. So what do you like about your profession? You’ve been in this profession how many years? A long time now.

Paul Peeler: Golly, what, going on 25 years or so? I mean, ‘cause I left and came back. But yeah by 25 years or so. The reason I got into the profession is different the reason that I’ve stayed.

And the reason I enjoy my work now is it’s just an intersection of things that I really enjoy. I enjoy helping people. I enjoy teaching. I enjoy coaching. I really enjoy the non-financial aspect of working with people, of digging in and helping them go where they want to go. For example, several years ago, I was having a conversation with a client who worked as an attorney in one of the largest law firms in Atlanta, successful by every measure as an attorney, but he didn’t want to be an attorney anymore.

He wanted to leave that and he wanted to teach at the college level. And when we would talk about his work, he had one particular tone. And when he would start talking about the idea of leaving his job, going back to school and getting his degree and teaching at the college level, his eyes would just light up.

And there was an energy and a cadence that was heightened above and beyond what we had in our normal financial planning means. I said, “Ah, we’re onto something here.” So it took a while, but he finally put in his resignation. He had saved up enough money to go and get his graduate degree. And he’s currently working to secure a teaching job outside of his law degree.

So that’s what I love doing. I love helping people break out of what they think they should be doing or what they were always told they should be doing or what they were told life should be about or wherever they find themselves, if they want to be in a different situation, I just love helping them map out the why and then the how, and it’s an enormous privilege of being part of that process when you see people’s lives change.
Don Patrick: Yeah, it’s such a rewarding profession, watching people retire, career change like that. I mean, that’s so powerful. We make a decent living doing that, but it’s so rewarding.

Paul Peeler: Oh, yeah. The autonomy and the independence of being able help people on my own terms rather than how a company dictates I need to help people that’s non-negotiable for me. So that has been, an enormous benefit of being independent within the Integrative Financial Group under that umbrella.
Don Patrick: Yeah, and that’s so great. From the top looking down from the 30,000-foot view, the advisors, financial planners, and the consortium are all financial planners. But everybody does it their way, which is so cool. I mean, it’s a wonderful thing.

Paul Peeler: Oh, yeah. I mean, there’s like we said earlier, there’s no one perfect way to do something and you have to work with clients. I think any professional has to work with clients in a way that reflects who they are with an authenticity that reflects what their worldview is and what we set up here at Integrated allows advisors to do that.

Don Patrick: So what are some of the bigger challenges you face running your business and your practice?

Paul Peeler: As I reflect on that question, something that I constantly deal with and I talk to my colleagues about constantly as well as talk to Andrews Brown, director of advisor development for Integrated. It’s constantly finding ways to get more tasks off of my desk because the thing that brings value to my clients and value to my business is when I’m either in front of clients or doing client-facing work. And there are plenty of things, even though I’ve outsourced a lot and I delegate a lot, there are still plenty of things that come across my desk in a given day that I don’t either I don’t want to do, or I don’t think I should be doing and systematizing processes in a way that get those off my desk is a constant challenge.

Don Patrick: Trying to keep that desk clean.

Paul Peeler: Absolutely. It’s nuts. Once, just when you think you’ve got, okay, I figured out a way to delegate this through a process, three other things pop up. It’s nuts. But I guess that’s part of the challenge and the fun of being an independent professional.

Don Patrick: So why did you join the consortium in particular?

Paul Peeler: So I decided in late 2005, well, my employer was moving operations to Chicago and they said you can remain employed if you want to move to Chicago. And that’s not something that I wanted to do. So I started casting about for where am I land? And I decided to hang out my own shingle because I always felt like even though I work for financial firms, that the equity was actually in the relationship.

So I went to my wife, we talked about that. She backed me and she trusted me, which I don’t get, but hey, here we are. But I decided to be independent. I had, because I’d been in a proprietary shops all my life, I had no idea what that even meant or what that looked like.

So I just started calling independent BDs. I started calling custodians, just trying to figure out how this might work. The independent BDs, got me in touch with various office managers and OSJs in the Atlanta area, and I talked to three or four, and you said be nice, and so I’ll be nice because I won’t name names, but most of them were, I don’t know, most of them were okay or several were okay, a couple were kind of weird.
And I just couldn’t figure out how I was going to work with him. But then LPL reached out and got me in touch with you and Bonnie, your assistant, set up a lunch with us. We had lunch and I was like I think I can work with this Don guy.

I don’t know anything about the business, but at least I like Don and you guys kind of helped me through the process, helped me understand what I needed to do. The onboarding process, which I had no idea about it. I didn’t know what I need to be doing, but Bonnie and Karen walked me through that.
And so in October 2005, when it finally came time to cut the cord, I had a place to land that following Monday. So that’s how I got here and the rest is history.

Don Patrick: Fantastic. And you’ve been on the advisory board, well, the advisory board, a little quick history. We formed a consortium in 2003, and the first thing I did was put together an advisory board, not a board of directors.

And it’s been one of the most important things I’ve done in terms of the success of the consortium. So we’re getting great feedback from smart people, independent thinkers, really reflect their peers, and you’ve been on the board a long time, Paul, and just for you all to know, we meet four times a year, the meetings last typically three to four hours, and they’re typically very meaty, and all you get paid is a free meal.

Paul Peeler: But it’s a really good meal, Don.

Don Patrick: You’re a great contributor, and just can’t thank you enough for all you’ve done. Being on the board as well as in the consortium.

Paul Peeler: Well, you know, it’s my pleasure. I talk to people and I’m in a couple of different study groups and mastermind groups.

And I know the advisory board isn’t considered a mastermind group, but every time I spend a few hours several times a year with the people that are in that group, everyone is just super smart, super accomplished, and I feel like I learned so much. And so if you say I contribute, that’s great, but I get so much more out of those meetings than that I feel like I give. So it’s an enormous privilege and it’s an enormous benefit to me to be able to be a part of that group.

Don Patrick: That’s great. So you use three words to describe your talents and strengths.

Paul Peeler: Empathy, innovation, and listening.

Don Patrick: You nailed it. I know you pretty well.

Paul Peeler: I mean we could drill down on those, but I think at the core of what I try to do, that those three words can encapsulate that.

Don Patrick: That’s perfect. So you are very involved in the community and particular areas and you have created what is called the Preparedness Project.

Paul Peeler: Yeah, the Preparedness Project.

Don Patrick: Bring your heart and soul into this.

Paul Peeler: Yeah. So the Preparedness Project, we started that in mid-2022. And actually, what the Preparedness Project was a culmination and a coming together, a lot of pro bono work that I was already doing in the community. And after speaking with the aforementioned Andrews Brown and working with you and how that might work, what it was a formal rollout where we provide pro bono financial planning services to individuals who are parents and or caregivers of folks that are coping with a serious mental illness.

The caregivers and parents that we just talked about are under enormous financial pressure, usually don’t have a lot of bandwidth to devote to things, maybe money’s pretty tight. And so it’s about how can they make sure that they are prepared, and their children or loved ones are prepared for the time when they are not around, because that time will come, in helping them move to a better position. We just have great, great, great success stories. We’re meeting with–this week we’ve got Gloria who’s coming through the process with her and her daughter. So we’re excited about the work we’re doing. We feel like we are giving people a voice, who maybe felt like they’ve had a voice before and we’re helping people on the back end, and we’re excited about that.

Don Patrick: That’s powerful. That’s a very complex area. Wow. How do they find you?

Paul Peeler: Well, we got a website called the Preparedness Project. It’s the preparednessproject.org, preparednessproject.org. So there are several ways that people find us. We have a LinkedIn page. So we have consistent posts on LinkedIn. We also did a fair amount of, well, there was an enormous amount of interest from the financial press early on.

So we had a lot of exposure through great magazines like Financial Planning magazine, thestreet.com. We had a lot, we had a number of profiles in some high-profile magazines. So when people search, that content comes up, they get sent over to us. Also, we have great relationships with special needs attorneys and estate planning professionals here in the area.

And if someone comes to a special needs planner and are asking questions that may be beyond what that special needs attorney feels answering from a financial planning standpoint, they send us and we run them through our Preparedness Project process. Essentially someone comes to us to engage the process, they complete a discovery form, they send it to us and they meet with us. We do an online Zoom call where we kind of dig down and dig down into the bones of that discovery forum that they said. We will do a short analysis and come up with some recommendations. We will come back, do another video chat a couple weeks later and have a collaboration meeting in terms of what we think some good action steps are, what they think they can commit to, and then we provide them those action items and how to execute and on their own. And they do that, we’ll have a follow-up a short while later, and then we’ll follow up back a year later to see how things are faring. So it’s been working well, but we can, always use more people coming through the system.

Don Patrick: That’s amazing, Paul, to take your skill set and your experience and to be able to roll that out to the community like that. That’s amazing. You’re putting them through a regular planning process, pro bono.

Paul Peeler: Yeah. Now it’s tailored to their, when I say tailored, really it’s modified to their situation. But yeah, it’s a financial plan that I would, you know, we would charge thousands of dollars for if someone came in outside of the Preparedness Project Program.

Don Patrick: So have you figured out how to do a charitable deduction for your in kind volunteer work? You know what it costs.

Paul Peeler: I know what it costs. We hadn’t gone there yet. I’ll probably give it to you on that. But yeah, anything that brings me under scrutiny from the IRS, I tend to stay far, far, far away from that.

Don Patrick: Yeah, so you don’t deduct your home office, obviously.

Paul Peeler: I do not. No.

Don Patrick: Well, let’s dig into more aspects of your business in terms of outsourcing. And I said 90% of your business is outsourced in terms of operations. I know it’s pretty close to that. So how have you structured, why have you done it this way? What works? What doesn’t work?

Paul Peeler: Well, I’ll kind of go through the history and then maybe we can go through any follow-up questions. I think that the genesis of that posture toward my business, actually, if you rewind all the way back to the late 1990s, I think it was around 1997, there was a magazine called Fast Company.

I don’t know if they’re still in existence anymore, but they had an article at the time is called Free Agent Nation and it talked about how people were dropping out of the corporate world because technology, back in 1997, technology was advancing to the point where people could engage and be their own business owners, consultants, professionals, and whatnot, on their own without working inside a company.
And that was way before the word solopreneur actually came about, but that was the concept in this article. And I was really taken by that. I thought if I ever had my own business, I think that would be a neat way to go about it.

And then kind of fast forward, I think into the 2000s, I read, like many people did, 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss. And certainly, I work more than four hours a week, but the idea that he had about using automation and processes and outsourcing to run a company, I just thought that was just the neatest thing in the world.
I said, man, that is the way to go to eliminate headaches, to eliminate HR. And again, I wasn’t working for myself at the time. I kind of had visions for doing that, but you know, the four-hour work week was probably a big part of that. And then fast forward in late 2005, 2006, when I did have my own business, I joined Integrated Financial Group.

And I remember vividly, okay, I didn’t have an assistant. I couldn’t afford anybody. I could barely afford myself. I remember being at the Integrated office at the time and there were within the course of a few months a couple of advisors with Integrated lost their assistants and they were in a crisis.

I remember just, I remember hearing the panic because their assistants were doing everything. And now all of a sudden, I had to replace their assistant and also do all this work. And I remember thinking to myself, I don’t ever want to be in that position. That just doesn’t make any sense to me. So around that time, I was also reading the book E-Myth that a lot of people have read and talking about how to build processes and build structure into a business so that a small business owner can get out of the day-to-day minutiae and that coupled with what went on with some of my fellow advisors, I decided that rather than hiring a person, that I was going to go into the open market when I could and purchase functionality.

In other words, rather than buying a human or hiring a human to do these particular items for me, I would, when I say hiring a human, I mean hiring a person that would do all this stuff for me, that I would go out of the outsourcing market and just purchase the functionality of back office work, portfolio management, whatever it may be.

And in my first foray into that was after an IFG retreat one year, I discovered that there were back office outsourcers who would work with LPL Financial, pardon me, work with Securities America, at the time, and ‘cause that was the broker-dealer that we were working with.

And so I engaged that firm. They were out in California and they started doing applications. They started doing the heavy lifting on back office. And I’ve used that in some form or format ever since. And actually, that model of working with back office was the forerunner of the ASAP program that Integrated uses now for virtual back office work.

But then after I got that integrated to my business, that way of outsourcing, then I outsourced to a third party to keep my calendar full. So I purchased, not purchased, but I hired Jennifer. She actually continues to work with me, but hired her in a 1099 contractor arrangement. And her role was to make sure that my calendar was full and to keep people systematically in front of me.

And while her role has expanded and she continues to do that and how technology has helped with that, but that was the second thing I did. So at that point we had back office and that appointment setting. Then I came to the conclusion that the whole investment management piece really wasn’t for me.

And what I mean by that is investment management can take up an enormous amount of time for a financial professional, but that isn’t, I realized that isn’t how I was going to move the meter for clients long term. So now I rely heavily on IFG investment solutions. I also rely heavily on the IFG investment committee who meets periodically.

And I dial into those meetings to understand kind of the thought process prior to what they’re doing. But again, I’m engaged on it in a return on life process and investment management is a part of that, but not the most important part. So I outsource, again, to investment solutions. Then I outsourced QuickBooks, which was easy had I known it was going to cost so little to do that. I would have done that a lot earlier, but did that. And then outsourcing, while I don’t outsource financial planning and I’m trying to figure out a way to do that in a way that makes sense in my business. I outsourced data input.

So I’ll go through the discovery meeting and complete the document and I will send that to a third party who will input that into eMoney with a lot fewer mistakes and a lot faster than I would. And then finally, I’ve got a pretty robust marketing system that I utilize.

It’s a combination of hard copy, newsletters, social media, targeted emails that go out to different target groups. I’ve been doing that myself, and that took hours upon, I mean, it wasn’t like 15 hours a week, but it took hours each week to run that. But after talking with IFG Studio, I offloaded that to Studio, and now they handle all of that.

We do content creation on my side. Studio handles the dissemination, getting it through compliance and things of that nature. And I just create the content between Jennifer and Studio. Somehow it just shows up in modified format where it’s supposed to be. So those are the things I’ve outsourced to date. Still looking at things to outsource, but that’s where I am right now.

Don Patrick: What other things are you looking at trying to outsource?

Paul Peeler: What I would love to do is outsource the actual creation and development of an initial financial plan. For a lot of people, it’s 75% of it is the same. So I would like to be able to outsource that. I know that ‘cause my custodian provides that, exploring that, and they’re also third-party outsourcers that will do that as well. And I’m trying to, and when I say trying to, really what it means is I’m considering at this point. I’m not really digging into it now, but that’s probably the next thing that I want to outsource so that I can, again, take the time that I was putting into that and be in front of clients and engage with clients on the return on life.

Don Patrick: And so essentially—

Paul Peeler: Yeah. Exactly.

Don Patrick: We’ve explored trying to offer that service for years. There’s a lot of challenges and it seems a lot of advisors really don’t want to outsource that or delegate that necessarily.

Paul Peeler: Where my issue on that is because I rarely come up with, you know, rarely develop a quote-unquote financial plan that I’m like a book that I’m giving to clients.

And that’s what it seems like a lot of the outsourced pair of planning does. Once I’m utilizing the data input services, and once the data input is there, that’s a lion’s share of it. And then I can go in and tweak based on this technique or that technique and actually putting together a plan from the beginning really doesn’t mesh well with my collaboration meeting because I’m coming up with three or four things. Actually not three or four, that’s probably overstating it. I’m coming up with a couple of different options for a client and discussing it and then putting together the action items where my perception of a pair of planning is they put together a plan and say, okay, here’s what you do. And with how I work with clients on a collaborative standpoint, it really hasn’t meshed well, but we’ll get there.

Don Patrick: Oh, I agree. Who are you using for the data input? How to source that input?

Paul Peeler: eMoney actually has a data entry team that you can use them to do the data entry. It’s pretty inexpensive. I think it’s like 50 bucks an hour. And they get nothing. I’ll send over seven or eight pages of data and it’s pretty complex and I’ll send it over to them and they’ll get it, they’ll get it uploaded. Ask me to look at it. I’ll look at it. There might have to be a tweak or two, but it’s pretty much the way it needs to be. And I’ll get a bill for 20 bucks.

Don Patrick: It’s amazing. And that, and like I said, that’s about 70, 80% of the heavy lifting. I’m going to wind back to the virtual assistant. So you got outsourced to this firm. And I think Kevin Garrett was also using this firm and you two worked so hard with us to develop a virtual assistant program. You had experience with it. You had ideas how to run it. So you two were instrumental in this. And it’s been a journey. The program is incredible now. It’s unbelievable, and Integrated still subsidizes it. We probably always will. We haven’t figured out how to actually make it at least break even, but we view it as an investment.

Even if you have a team, a staff member, we say this so many times where, like you said, somebody leaves, somebody gets sick, plugin and there it goes. And we have so many people using it, but it was you and Kevin, I think Mark Steven, did so much getting that thing off the ground for us.

Paul Peeler: What’s interesting, Kevin and I were using a firm out in California, and the individual that we were using who was an employee of that firm is now working for the ASAP program, and the individual that Mark Stevens, who was a part of that Working group, the three of us, the person that he was using as a virtual assistant, works for the ASAP program now.

So I think that’s, I think that’s really interesting, but the ASAP program has been great for my business. I know that Integrated subsidizes that and believe me, I am grateful for that. So keep that up. But in terms of the cost or when you take into the account of what, you know, the money it takes to, or the soft cost of actually investing time and energy to hire someone, to get them trained, to get them up and running, their real estate costs, their technology costs, their licensing costs, their continuing education cost, whatever they need to do, doing those meetings, and then turn around and have to do all that three years later when they leave, the money that I pay to integrate it to participate in the ASAP program, I save money. I’ve done the math. I do the math every year. And I save money, not to mention the fact that I have the flexibility to ramp up and ramp down my usage. If I have heavy usage one month, I ramp it up. But if I don’t have a lot of, if have weeks where I don’t have a lot of meetings, a lot of things to follow up on, well, I don’t have that overhead.

Don Patrick: It’s a birdie box.

Paul Peeler: It is. And you’re paying quote unquote more for the flexibility, but, again, when you factor in all of the soft cost involved, I would say, particularly what I charge per hour if someone’s going to do just an hourly meeting with me. What I charge per hour, if you were to apply that to the soft costs of hiring and managing someone, I come out way ahead.

Don Patrick: I think even on the hard costs because you’re only paying them when they’re actually doing something for you. And what I’ve seen, because we look at the billing that goes out and particularly some of the heavy users like you, I would say the hard cost is about a third of what it would be if you had your own team members.

Paul Peeler: Absolutely. Absolutely. Even if I hired someone part-time, if I hired someone part-time 20 hours a week, and they just straight worked 20 hours, the cost is still less than what I pay all in with the ASAP program.

Don Patrick: So your business, I remember, used to use Pareto prior to Redtail. And man, you were automating that thing. You had it running automatically, all kinds of things. And I was so impressed. And you said, “Well, I don’t have a choice. It’s just me.”

Paul Peeler: Right. So, yeah, I used the former version of Pareto Platform, which was built on the Microsoft Dynamics. And really in hindsight, Microsoft Dynamics is way more than what a solo practitioner would need.

But what it did provide was an enormous amount of automation and it could do things that a person did. It had much greater functionality than Redtail does. So what Dynamics did for me at the time, you know, humans do now, but you know, what you were talking about was right is that, at the time, I was scraping by as most people knew the business do.

And I couldn’t afford to have a person come do this. So I had to figure out a way to get technology to do it for me. So it was, the Dynamics did it. I’m grateful that we did the switch to Redtail several years ago simply because from a business management standpoint, most of the ASAP program felt very comfortable with Redtail.

Plus, if I wanted to, when the time comes where I wanted to sell my business, I wanted the CRM to reside on a more mainstream platform. And at the time that was Redtail. So that was the decision behind that.
Don Patrick: Well, it’s amazing. So your CRM is kind of the hub you have. Workflows, processes and procedures, delegating to ASAP, to investment solutions, calendaring, marketing, social media. It’s amazing. It’s a smooth-running machine from what I can see.

Paul Peeler: Well, maybe it’s smooth from your point, but it certainly fits and starts from this side. But if you think it looks smooth, we’ll take it. And actually at the end of the day, as long as clients think it’s smooth and it’s serving them, that’s really, at the end of the day that’s what we’re trying to do.
Don Patrick: That’s key. I’m going to ask you one more question before we sign off and that is just tell us something that others do not know about you.

Paul Peeler: Well I’ll say this. So back when I was in high school, I don’t know if they still do it now, but Cowleys in Georgia had what was called a star student program.

And the star student was the person in the county that had the highest SAT score. Now that didn’t mean that person was going to be the valedictorian or salutatorian in their class. It just means they had the highest SAT score. So my senior year in high school, I came in as second runner-up as star student behind Robert Young and if Robert, if you’re out there, I’m still gutting for you.

So, Robert, who was star student, he had the highest SAT in the county. He went on with a great career with Wells Fargo and retired here a few years ago. But, yeah, I had the second-highest SAT in my county the year I graduated high school.

Don Patrick: Oh, I believe it. I know you. You’re a smart guy and you’re a—

Paul Peeler: Well, yeah, but I can tell you that, my grades in high school certainly didn’t reflect that level of SAT accomplishment. I was one of those you need to apply yourself more kind of guys in high school, but it is what it is.

Don Patrick: I love it. That’s great. Paul, I want to thank you so much for taking this time. There’s so much that your peers can learn from this and your insights and ideas and learning about you. This is a wonderful format, I think, or platform for us to kind of get to know one another. There’s so many of us. It’s difficult. That’s a big part of this podcasting.

Paul Peeler: Well, thanks for doing this. And it’s been a pleasure talking to you, Don. It always is. And I appreciate you having me. Thank you.

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.