Don Patrick: Welcome everybody to IFG’s podcast, What Works. This is episode
number 12 and our guest today is Mike Irvin, Integrated Financial Group,
Atlanta, Georgia. Mike, welcome.

Mike Irvin: Thank you. I’m really excited to be here. Glad to be on your
podcast.

Don Patrick: Me too. It’s fun. So let’s get started and just tell us a
little bit about your family and give us some background. I know you’ve got,
you’re a family of women and you, right?

Mike Irvin: Yes, I am. My wife is named Liz and I’ve got two daughters,
Virginia and Julie. Julie is 16 and Virginia is nine. We’re about to get a
dog and that will probably be a girl too.

Don Patrick: I love it. I can’t believe she’s 16.

Mike Irvin: Isn’t that unreal?

Don Patrick: It is.

Mike Irvin: I just went to see her first, high school football game where
she was a cheerleader.

Don Patrick: So she’s in the cheerleading.

Mike Irvin: She is. She is. She’s on the junior varsity, St. Pius
cheerleaders and they had their big rivalry game against Marist last night.
It was a lot of fun.

Don Patrick: Oh, that’s great. So she’s athletic, obviously.

Mike Irvin: She is. Her main sport is tennis. And so she does tennis and
cheerleading.

Don Patrick: Oh my gosh.

Mike Irvin: She’s on the varsity competition team, which I was really proud
of. I can’t imagine doing the stuff they do.

Don Patrick: That’s amazing. And I guess she picked up tennis because of
you. You’re a tennis player.

Mike Irvin: Actually, I picked up tennis because of her. She, I had played
as a kid, just around the neighborhood.

She got into it. We got her lessons and I kind of fell in love with it
watching her and going to lessons and that’s how that came to be.

Don Patrick: Amazing. I love it. So she got her dad involved. I love it. I
call it a guitar picker. You’re a really accomplished musician. You want to
tell us a little bit about that?

‘Cause I know you’ve played live and professionally, and I think you told me
you just finished the studio in your new home.

Mike Irvin: Yes, I did. Actually, the biggest accomplishment is that people
have allowed me on stage as many times as they have. I have a lot of fun. My
ambition is a lot greater than my natural talent, but I’ve worked hard at it
and had a lot of good teachers and mentors, which has been fun.

Did create a studio. I had the guys at GIK Acoustics come in, they’re the
same people that do the sound stuff for Abbey Road. And they kind of
measured out my room and everything and set it all up. And so hopefully it
sounds really good. I can’t tell how it sounds in your headphones, but it
sounds good to me.

Don Patrick: Yeah, it’s fantastic. It’s the best I’ve heard. I knew, I’d
forgotten you’d done the studio. And then when I heard you, you can tell. So
are you recording? Is that the idea with the studio?

Mike Irvin: It is. I like to write my own music. I wrote a lot of songs back
in my college days in my twenties.

I’ve started kind of recording them, but it is a little odd for a 47 year
old married man with two kids to be singing kind of pop songs about the
exploits of people in college. It just doesn’t work right. So I’m going to
have to write some new songs to have something decent to record.

Don Patrick: I didn’t know you wrote songs also. Oh my goodness. What genre
do you prefer or enjoy the most?

Mike Irvin: It’s really weird. I started out mostly in the acoustic,
country-style stuff, the Pure Prairie League, that kind of stuff. But
recently I’ve been playing a lot of like the more poppy stuff, the stuff
that’s coming out now, kind of emulating what some of the younger people are
coming out with and some of the techniques that they’re using in the studio
are just amazing. And so it’s really creative they’re using sound in a lot
of different ways, making music with things that have traditionally not made
music. One of the most popular songs out right now by a guy named Charlie
Puth, he used a coffee mug to create the sound. So I’ve been playing around
with a lot of weird sounds like that. And it’s been fun.

Don Patrick: That’s crazy. And what do your daughters think about your
musicianship?

Mike Irvin: I think they kind of fall in line with my wife. They call it my
geeky stuff, my dorky stuff. And so I go hide in the studio and I don’t
think they quite know what I do in here, but.

Don Patrick: I love it. Well, let’s talk a little bit about your profession,
how you got started. I know you’ve been around quite a while and kind of
give us a little history and how you got started and how you progressed.

Mike Irvin: Sure. I found the profession when I was 18. I was looking for a
job, and walked in and talked to a lady and she told me that there was
another guy in the office who was looking for interns, but I was a little
too young.

I needed to be a senior in college before I could do it, and I was only a
freshman. And so I went and then I went back the next week and I went back
the next week. And finally, after the sixth time that I went into the
office, I said, look, you don’t have anybody yet for this job and I’m here.
And so he hired me and that was the rest of the story. And I guess that was
the summer of 97 and I’ve been hanging out in brokerage firms and financial
planning offices ever since.

Don Patrick: So you are persistent. That’s the number one key to success.

Mike Irvin: I am nothing if not persistent.

Don Patrick: So was that a traditional brokerage house or?

Mike Irvin: It was. It was an old company called Robinson Humphrey who were
gobbled up by Smith Barney, who were gobbled up and merged with Shearson,
and then, Morgan Stanley, actually City Group, then Morgan Stanley.

Don Patrick: Yeah. And how long were you with them?

Mike Irvin: That was just a little summer job that was, I did a summer job
with them. Then the next summer I did a summer job with a company called
Wheat First Butcher Singer, which became First Union and then, Wachovia. And
then Wachovia failed. And so it’s now Wells Fargo. And so I did a summer
with them and then I parlayed that into an actual real grownup job when I
graduated at a company called A.G. Edwards. And A.G. Edwards was one of the
old-line firms.

I did that until about 2009, from 99 until 2009, and then left and went to
Morgan Keegan. And finally, decided that if all these companies were going
to merge and they were going to sell me every three years, I was going to go
independent. So if I got sold, it was going to be because I sold myself.

And so in 2012, I went independent with IFG and I’ve never looked back.

Don Patrick: So you still have a baby face. And you’re 21, 22 trying to bust
in this business. How’d that go?

Mike Irvin: Not well. Not well at all. I mean, I look, I didn’t even look
like it was in college. I was still, every bar was getting carded. I was
getting carded until I was about 29, 30.

And so I looked like I was about 14 years old asking people, “Hey, sir,
you’ve worked your entire life. You’ve got 1.2 million in your retirement
savings. Why don’t you let me manage that? I’ve never had a baby. I’ve never
had a mortgage. I’ve never had anything. But let me tell you how to do it.”

It was an awkward first few years, but I made it through.

Don Patrick: Well, that’s a testament. I mean, if you make it three to five
years, you’ve made it. But at that young age and with that baby face, I
mean, how did you go about building the business?

Mike Irvin: Well, I did two things. First, I did a lot of cold calling and
be happy to share about that.

I think in this business, you have to have some luck. I think in this
business, you have to have some sort of story. And my break came when an
older advisor, he could not grow anymore. He was a fully commissioned
stockbroker, and he couldn’t grow anymore. He was hitting 1.2 million every
year.

That was what he was doing, which back in 99, 2000, 2002, 2003, those were
big numbers, 1.2 back then. And so he was doing 1.2. He was like the number
50 broker at A. G. Edwards. And he had a vision that he could get to number
one at A.G. Edwards. And so what he did was he formed a group, me and
another guy, and he welcomed us in and the whole idea behind the practice
was that we would get a 25% cut of everything he did above 1.2 because he
couldn’t get above 1.2. He’d been 1.2 for like six or seven years and it was
obvious he couldn’t push the commission button. So our job was to take other
assets that were non-performing and turn them into fee-based accounts and
then grow them through referrals.

So we did that and that was extremely successful. When we finally got to
about two and a quarter million by 2006 and 2007. And then the problems hit
and the financial crisis came about and we had just merged in 06. A.G.
Edwards had merged with Wachovia and been bought out by Wachovia. And, at
that point, the financial crisis came and Wachovia was a victim of that.

So basically, Wachovia didn’t understand our model. And so they said, “Hey,
you’re not going to be able to work like this anymore.” And so they
basically threw me out. I had 6 million in assets, not a whole lot to stand
on. They said, “Go find yourself a home. And good luck.” And so I had 6
million dollars in assets and went to Morgan Keegan.

And I had enough training by being with that gentleman. It really helped me
out. So by that point I was, I guess, 29 and out kind of redoing my own
business. That’s kind of the way it started. So I had a really lucky break.
I guess you make your own luck. I’d worked really, really hard in the
bullpen, cold calling and staying on the phones.

And he saw that. So he invited me in. I’m not sure that I would have, I
would have survived on my own, just as a cold caller had he not come in and
saved me, which was very nice.

Don Patrick: Well, it was a win-win clearly.

Mike Irvin: It was. He, we got to number six. We never quite made it to
number one before Wachovia bought us out. So we got to number six from
number 50.

Don Patrick: I know you well enough. You are persistent. You work hard. You
work really smart. And you’re one of the few people I’ve ever met that
actually likes cold calling.

Mike Irvin: Yeah. Cold calling is, I really enjoy it actually. My entire
business. Came about from a snippet of conversation I overheard between two
guys that worked at a bucket shop in New York City.

I was up in New York visiting a friend, and they worked with a company
called Sands Brothers, which was a really little boutique outfit at 40th and
Park. We were in a bar, and they were talking, and they mentioned that they
were finding people by calling in to a company’s directory. So they’d call
the 1-800 number for the company, and then they’d press star to find a
person by name and then they’d just start dialing random names like Smith
and Jones. And when they’d find that lead, they’d have that name, they’d
know how old he sounded on the phone and then they’d call back the next
morning because they knew who he was. They’d cold call in the next morning.

So that was how they were generating their leads. And so when I got my job,
there was a company in Atlanta called Southern Company. It’s our electric
utility here. They own Georgia Power. And so I started calling Georgia Power
employees and saying, “I’m Mike Irvin. I work with a number of your
employees, your friends, and I’d like to share with you what I’m doing for
them.”

And I built a business that way. And still, gosh, 25 years later, I’d say
still 85% of my business is Southern Company or Georgia Power employees.

Don Patrick: And you did it in a very deliberate, smart fashion. I remember,
correct me if I’m wrong, but you actually would go into LinkedIn and guess
their age based on when they graduated. And that’s what you focused on was
50 and over. Is that correct?

Mike Irvin: Yes.

Don Patrick: You created your own cold call list by doing things like that.

Mike Irvin: Yeah. I I would cold call. I would listen to the directory at
night and I would understand that certain names came about in certain
genres. So Bruce and Keith were names that were really big in the 1940s and
50s.

And so I’d know that by the time I was calling them, they were 50, 55, 60
years old and that Trevor was a big name in the 80s. So if I came across a
guy whose name was Trevor, he probably wasn’t going to be a person that was
old enough to be my client because that name wasn’t very popular in the 40s
and 50s.

And so I looked at that. I looked at graduation years. If you could find
graduation years on LinkedIn, that was always helpful, just anything you
could do to kind of narrow it down and find people that were in the right
age or demographic age-wise that you were looking for. What’s funny is now
that I’m older, I’m actually looking for people who are younger.

I’m actually looking for people that are in their forties and I’m 47 years
old now, and I’ve changed my entire business in the way I’m prospecting now,
and it’s focused all on people who are 55 and younger.

Don Patrick: So you’re trying to basically spread out the demographics in
your business, right?

Mike Irvin: That’s right. I’ve found that I’ve got all those clients and now
some of my clients that I got when they were 60 years old, they’re 84 years
old now. And I’ve got one client. He’s one of the first clients that I ever
got. And I was talking to him yesterday and we were laughing about that,
that he was about to retire.

It was two years from retirement when we met and now he’s 84 years old. And
so he’s taking money out for distributions and the like. And so as your
business gets older, the value of that business kind of decreases with age.
And so now I’m trying to build my next generation business that’ll last
through my career and into the next generation.

Don Patrick: Yeah. And we’ll talk about that some more. You’re doing some
pretty interesting things. You’ve always done some very interesting things.
I mean, using people’s names to guess their age is fascinating. That’s
really sharp. So Did Georgia Power ever shut you down?

Mike Irvin: A few times.

Don Patrick: Yeah.

Mike Irvin: And I don’t blame them. I was calling their employees on their
phone lines and, and they would occasionally say, “Hey, we’ve gotten a few
calls from people saying that you’re calling and that we can’t have you
calling our employees in the middle of the workday.” And I get that, but you
know, I had to make a living.

So I would let it go for a few months and I’d started on Coca-Cola and that
was really nice. I’ve got some really wonderful friends and clients who came
from Coca-Cola in the times when Georgia Power had shut me down. And then
I’d go back to Georgia Power and maybe a few months, a year later, they’d
call back and say, “Hey, look, we hear you’re at it again. Please, you got
to stop calling.” So I’d give it another year. And that’s when I went to
Kimberly Clark and Agco and did the exact same thing with those companies
that made some really nice friends there and came back to Georgia Power and
it’s been kind of a back and forth. Sometimes it feels a little like Coyote
and Roadrunner.

Don Patrick: So you’re well known.

Mike Irvin: I hope not.

Don Patrick: Everybody knows Mike Irwin. Now, I know at Southern Company and
Georgia Power, they had in service withdrawal capabilities, which was great.
You could capture some of the assets while they’re still working and then
you get another bite at the apple when they retire.

Coke, Kimberly Clark, those companies, did they have in service? Which are
all, usually over the age of 59 and a half, I think.

Mike Irvin: It was once you were over age 59 and a half. But there’s a lot
of stuff going on. If you’re cold calling, and while most people that work
at these big companies, most of their assets will be in their 401k, there’s
always stuff that falls out of the trees.

Everybody has some other little thing that’s going on in their life. And if
you take a financial planning approach to it, you’ll find that. And you’ll
find that clients are a lot bigger than the sum of their 401k.

Don Patrick: Right. So I also know that you, I mean, you really, track your
metrics. And I assume you also set targets for your cold calling, but you
had a pretty good idea how many calls it would take and things of that
nature.

Mike Irvin: I did. And to a lesser extent I do right now, as I mentioned,
I’m really changing my business. I’m taking my business in a really exciting
new direction. Those metrics will start up, but they will be in an entirely
different style of metric when I get into the new business. The cold
calling, it hasn’t waned, but it has not been as efficient as it was before.

And when I mean before, I mean, before COVID. The work-from-home environment
has meant that a lot of people have stopped using their office phone, which
makes them harder to find. They aren’t at their desk. They’re now on the
road a lot more. They’re either at their house or they’re in their car.

And so that makes it a little bit more difficult. So I found that the cold
calling has not been as viable of a strategy, at least the way that I was
doing it. I think you’re always going to have to cold call if you’re a small
business, but the way I was doing it is not going to be as viable moving
forward.

So I think a change is in order and my metrics will change. But yes, I did.
I tracked my metrics very closely. I had dialed a number of leads. I
gathered number of dials, number of contacts, number of people that said
yes, number of people that said yes that were qualified, number of follow up
calls, number of follow-up contacts, number of first meetings set, number of
second meetings set, number of presentations meetings set, and then finally,
number of clients. And I had that funnel for, gosh, 20 years and followed it
religiously. And so I knew my numbers down to the—

Don Patrick: Yeah, that’s the key to success. I also remember walking by
your office one time. I mean, you were very methodical in your scripting and
you would actually create a script and then practice it until it was natural
for you.

Mike Irvin: Oh, I say, there were times when I would wake up saying my
script in my sleep.

Don Patrick: That’s critical. So I’m going to go ahead and jump forward to
your new method of marketing and prospecting and tell us what’s going on
there. It sounds pretty fascinating to me.

Mike Irvin: Sure. As I mentioned earlier, I’ve got a 16-year-old daughter
and we’re starting to look at the whole college thing, not only admissions
but also affording it. And I realized that the people that are my age are
all terrified. I mean, college has become just a pressure cooker to afford.

And so I started researching it, not for other people, but just for myself
and for my own daughters. There’s some people that were doing it and doing
very advanced college planning, and I started listening to them and what
they were doing. And the nicest thing about them is they weren’t just trying
to get you as a client.

They were also trying to teach advisors how to go out and be college
planning financial planners. And so I realized, wow, not only is this good
for my kids, but it’s probably a really good business because the people
that are looking to send their kids to college, they have saved money and
they’re typically higher income demographic and they’re younger because
they’re going to be between 42 and 54 somewhere in there when their kids
graduate from high school and so they’ve got a long runway after they, after
the kids graduate to earn more money and become even bigger clients, and
then all the way through their retirement. So it was a good demographic and
I can add a lot of value because I’ve got some, for the first time in my
life, I’ve got some built-in credibility. As you mentioned, when I was 22
years old, I was trying to tell 62-year-olds that I could help them retire.

And there wasn’t a lot of credibility there. But now I’ve got a 16-year-old
who’s eyeing college. And I’ve got the same worries that my prospective
clients have. And so now I’m talking the same language and I’m on the same
page as my prospective clients. And so I think that lends a lot of
credibility.

And it’s an area where there, it has not been over-processed. There are a
lot of financial planners who aren’t really doing college planning because
it doesn’t appear, at the first glance, to be a lucrative financial planning
target market. But I think I’ve found a way that can make it beneficial to
the client and beneficial to my business.

Don Patrick: So how are you helping these clients? It’s too late for them to
be saving money for college. What exactly are you doing and how are you
helping them?

Mike Irvin: What I found is that everybody, my whole career has been telling
me and telling clients, “You need to be saving money for college.” And what
I found is nobody is talking about how to make college less expensive.

And so what I’m doing is I’m taking all the strategies that I’ve used in
financial planning, your tax strategies, your gifting strategies, all the
things that we’ve learned for other facets of financial planning, and I’m
putting them in a more college planning way. And it’s multi generational
because not only is it parents helping kids, but it’s grandparents helping
kids.

So you’ve got a whole family. So I’m using all the estate planning stuff
that we’ve talked about for years. I’m using tax laws, capital gains,
harvesting, nothing that’s really advanced, but stuff that you wouldn’t
think to use with college planning. I’m putting it together to form kind of
a package and a process that people can go through to save significant
amounts on their college. Not only am I doing financial planning stuff, but
I’m also helping in the college search. So it becomes really important which
college you go to, which college your child chooses. And it’s not as obvious
as one might think. We have a tendency to think that the state universities
are going to be less expensive than the really elite private schools.

We have a tendency to think that Auburn, Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee,
Kentucky, Clemson, those schools are going to be less expensive than
Washington and Lee, Wake Forest, Vanderbilt. But the fact of the matter is
that just depends on who you and your family are. If you are a family who’s
making 150,000 dollars and have 200,000 dollars in the bank, it’s highly
likely that Vanderbilt, Wake Forest, and Washington and Lee are less
expensive for your family than say would be Auburn or South Carolina if
you’re in the state of Georgia. So smart school shopping is what starts it
and then good financial planning is what finishes it.

Don Patrick: So they’re less expensive because they have grants, endowments
and scholarships, that sort of thing. Is that how they become–

Mike Irvin: They’ve got their own endowment. But more importantly, they use
a different method for calculating financial need in the student. They use
what’s called an institutional method. And we’re all familiar with the
FAFSA, the Free Application for Student Aid.

And we all know about that but there’s another program called the CSS
Profile and it’s run by the college board. And it’s about 200 of the more
elite colleges around the country use the CSS Profile. And the CSS Profile,
the institutions have a lot more control over how they give their money. And
so they can decide with a lot more freedom and flexibility how they’re going
to give their money and to whom they’re going to give their money.

The state universities are more merit-based. They’re just looking for the
smartest student and so it’s more of a, just a straight competition for
merit aid at those schools. So you can get a lot better of a deal from these
colleges than we think, than we typically think. And what I’ve discovered by
doing this for my own daughters is that it’s a buyer’s market for college.

It’s not a seller’s market. The students are way more in control than they
think. But they are entering the college financial planning thing when
they’re a junior or a senior and they enter it without much preparation and
they enter it emotionally. And by doing that, they’re taking away the
advantages that they have in the buyer’s market.

Don Patrick: Fascinating. I had no idea. Now, are you charging a fee for
this or how’s this working?

Mike Irvin: I’m still building it out right now. What I’m doing is I’m going
to do like a three tiered approach. Most of my prospecting is going to be
seminar-generated. And what I’m going to do in those seminars is offer a
three tiered approach.

One is a 30-minute quick consultation, and I’ll give them a thing that I’ll
talk about in a minute, which is I’ll calculate their SAI, their student aid
index for them. And that’s the first step in college planning is to
understand what your student aid index is. And so I’ll do that for a client
for free.

And then if they want to go to the next step, which is kind of consultation.
I’m going to charge a flat fee for that, $499 to $500 and that’ll be a
90-minute consultation where I will go through the entire planning process
and really put out a strategy for the client. And then if the client wants
to take that, they can run and that’s no problem.

They’ve paid their financial planning fee. But I think the majority of
people will want that plan to be executed and they’ll know that I can
execute it because I was the designer. And so then it gets more into a
traditional fee based financial planning arrangement like we all know.

And so there’ll be three levels. One is just helping fellow man calculate
out their SAI and get that. The second will be a consultative approach,
which is just giving them the plan, but without execution. And then the
final would be execution.

Don Patrick: I love it. And how do you plan on getting attendees at the
seminars? Are you going to market these? Are you calling them seminars or
workshops?

Mike Irvin: Hadn’t really thought about it. There’s actually one of the
words that I’d come up with, strategy sessions, but the compliance may have
something to say about that. I don’t know if strategy sessions will fly.

Don Patrick: I don’t know. Who knows?

Mike Irvin: Yeah. This is all quite frankly a little plug for IFG’s
compliance office. They really take everything seriously, but they are so
consultative in their approach. Crystal has been really helpful to me in
getting stuff, compliant through compliance and getting it done in a way
that I can run my business without worrying about compliance.

She’s been, for the past four or five years, she’s been really helpful to
me. So I don’t worry about IFG or LPL’s compliance, but it is something I
have to think about in my wording. How I’m going to approach it and how I’m
going to get them, there are a couple of different ways. I am involved with
a number of nonprofits.

I’m involved with the Dunwoody Preservation Trust. I’m involved with Rotary
Youth Exchange. I have kids in school. And so what I’ve done to start with
is I’ve just talked to people that are my friends and said, “Hey, listen,
this is what I’m thinking about doing.” And I said, “Does this sound like
something you’d be interested in? Does that make sense?” And every one of
them, their necks have jerked around and said, “Yes, I want that. I’m
interested in that.” And so what I’ve been doing is I’ve been holding little
small groups, two or three people and get together and we just sit around a
table and talk it through.

And they have gotten a great deal of interest. And they’ve told me that one
gentleman is being extremely nice. He is introducing me to both of his
daughter’s softball teams. They have travel softball and they say, “These
guys are travel softball teams. The parents have a lot of money because they
can afford travel softball. And they’re just as scared as anyone else. Can I
introduce you to them?” And then I’ve got another lady who’s introducing me
to all of her friends up in a small town, northern suburbs of Atlanta, and
she’s kind of introducing me around the school up there, the public school
up there. And I’ve got a gentleman who’s introducing me around one of the
private schools up near Johns Creek.

And so it’s been really fun just by having three or four conversations. It’s
kind of exploding on its own. And so now I’m looking and thinking that once
I get everything set and the entire business plan fleshed out a little bit
more, going to some of these schools and talking directly with the
counseling office and saying, “Look, this is what I’m doing. And would you
mind if I shared it with some of your parents, if they’re interested.”

Don Patrick: That’s powerful. I love it. This thing, it seems like it’s
going to explode on you. I mean, this is very creative. It’s amazing. I love
it.

Mike Irvin: Thank you. And I wish I could take credit for being brilliant,
but there are other folks who I’m kind of standing on the shoulders of
giants.

There’s some other folks out there who have been instrumental in helping me.
The guys at College Aid Pro, they’ve really been wonderful. Joe Messenger,
he’s a gentleman out of Ohio who’s just a wonderful guy. He shares so much.
And that’s one thing that I have had through my life is people willing to
share with me and share ideas.

And so I have to give credit where credit’s due. I did not come up with any
of these ideas. These ideas are other people’s, but they’ve been nice and
kind enough to share. And I think that’s what moves humanity forward is when
we find something new that works and then, and share it with each other and
just realize that there’s an abundance in this world and that we’ve got.
There’s going to be enough business for all of us. If we share the ideas,
we’ll all be better off.

Don Patrick: Yeah, absolutely correct. But you do have to implement people
get ideas all the time. They don’t do anything with it. You’re creating a
real program. So I’m going to kind of go back now earlier in your career. So
you were, well, before you joined IFG at Morgan Keegan, were you doing
financial planning back then? Or is it primarily asset management or what?

Mike Irvin: I thought I was doing financial planning. When I got to IFG,
people were constantly asking, “Do you do financial planning?” And I was
like, “I’ve got my CFP. Of course I do financial planning.” It was really
interesting. It took me a long while to realize that I was doing, I guess
you’d call it financial planning lite.

I was talking about financial planning concepts, but I was not doing full on
financial plans. And through a couple of conversations with you,
conversations with a lady named Madge Caldwell, who has been instrumental in
helping my business grow, through conversations with a number of folks, I
have built a financial planning process that has really worked for me.

And so no, I was not doing financial planning when I was at Morgan Keegan or
A.G. Edwards, but I certainly do it now.

Don Patrick: So, what does your process look like?

Mike Irvin: Really, it’s a six step financial planning process. When I meet
somebody, the first thing we do is have a quick conversation to see if we’re
a match, to see if the services that I provide are the services that they’re
looking for, and to see if they’re the right match for me, to see if they’re
Their structure and what they’re looking for is a good fit for my business.
The second step, if we are a match, we go to what’s called a discovery
meeting.

And I have a list of financial planning questions. The clients all know the
answers off the top of their head. How many kids do you have? Do you own
your house? Very simple things. Insurance questions, tax questions, things
that they all know. And then in that same meeting, I gather the documents.

Their financial planning documents. And so that’s the second step. Third
step is I create a, I go take that information back and I create a financial
plan for them. And their financial plan is custom tailored to them. If they
have a twin brother who comes to me in a few weeks after them, their plan
will not look anything like their twin brothers.

And so I create a custom-tailored plan for them. And then the fourth step is
we get back together. I present the plan to them and it’s at that point
where I can tell them the exact cost down to the penny of how much it’s
going to cost to implement the plan. So they know what the plan is. They
know everything I’m recommending.

They know how much it’s going to cost to implement. And then the decision is
theirs. And that’s the fifth step. They decide if they’d like to implement
the plan. And if they do, then we move on to step six, which is we implement
the plan and we monitor the plan and we make adjustments to the plan on a
semi annual and annual basis.

Don Patrick: Do you share this six step process verbally, or do you have
something in writing that you share with them?

Mike Irvin: Mostly it’s verbal. I do have a piece of paper that would show
it. And I think it’s on my website as well under my process. If it’s okay,
I’ll say, I’ll share a story with you.

The first time I ever did it, I mentioned Madge Caldwell a little bit
earlier. She’s an executive consultant, an executive coach, and just
brilliant. She basically helped me put together my financial planning
process. And when she asked me what my process is, I told her, I went
through this random circular description of what I do.

And she goes, “No, Mike, what’s your process?” “Well, that is my process.”
And she goes, “No, Mike, what’s your process? You’re a certified financial
planner. You have a process.” And I looked at her and I said, “Madge, are
you talking about the thing that’s on the first page of the CFP manual?” And
she goes, “Yes, that’s your process.”

And I was just incredulous. I looked at her and said, “Madge, if I talk to a
client like that, if I tell him that the first step is we get together and
see if we’re a match, and the second step is if we get together and I ask
you financial planning questions, the prospective client is going to slap me
for talking down to him.”

And Madge goes, “No, he’s not. He’s going to thank you because he actually
understands what you’re doing.” And so I agreed that I would do it. The
first time I would go and this was when I was at Coca Cola and I went to a
wonderful man and I told him my process and I leaned across the table and I
literally gritted my teeth while I said it.

I said, “Mr., my process is very simple. The first step is what we’re doing
right now. We’re getting together to see if we’re a match. And if we are a
match, we’re going to go to the second step.” And I went on and on through
the process. And as I got deeper in the process, the guy’s leaning forward
in his seat and he’s nodding his head.

And by the end, I felt like he was looking at me like Moses coming down the
mountain with the tablets. And all I had done was told him what my process
is in a simplified manner. And so ever since that, imagine I have laughed,
that I finally have a financial planning process and it basically doubled my
income. Six steps doubles your income.

Don Patrick: Yeah. People want to know that you actually do have a process.
Like when you go to a doctor’s office, you know they have a process and
that’s powerful. And it is the CFP process.

Mike Irvin: It’s just the CFP process. It was on the first page of the
manual and I didn’t catch that for the first six years.

Don Patrick: So you tell them what it costs or what does it cost them?

Mike Irvin: It depends on the person. I mean, as I tell them in the first
meeting, I would love to be able to tell a family or a gentleman or a wife
what the exact cost is. I would love to be able to tell them that. But each
individual is different.

And when I’m meeting them for the first time, I have no idea what they are
going to need. I mean, I couldn’t get them within $2,000, $4,000, #$0,000 of
what it’s going to actually cost, because I have no idea. If you have a
stock and you need to sell it and that’s all we need to do for you. Well,
man, we can do that.

Extremely cheap. I mean, that’s a commodity and that costs next to nothing.
If you have an estate plan that needs to happen and you need to avoid estate
taxes and you need to make sure that your money gets to your kids in a tax
efficient and cost effective manner, and if you have insurance problems and
you’ve got properties all over the United States that have titling issues
and all of those things, it’s going to cost you significantly more.

And it takes going through the process to understand exactly what the cost
is. And so my job is to understand what the client’s looking for and what
the client needs and then move forward, let him know what I’m going to do
and then be able to communicate exactly what the price is once I know what
the price is.

Don Patrick: So are you charging a separate fee for the planning or is it an
AUM fee?

Mike Irvin: Typically speaking, it’s AUM. I had a rather large client about
a year ago who was selling their business for a significant amount. I
decided to do that one on a flat fee. It was good for them. It was good for
me. And so we did that on a flat fee.

And now that I’m moving into more college planning, there’s going to be that
flat fee to go through just the consultation portion. So I am doing more of
that. Traditionally, my business has been a fee based business with
insurance and other little commissionable stuff alongside it.

Don Patrick: Got it. So it’s, yeah, it’s packaged as an AUM. So you’re
charging managed money and part of that service is the financial planning.
Okay. And so what are your fees look like? And how do you manage money? And
what is your fee schedule like? Because I think this will blow people away.

Mike Irvin: I traditionally have managed my own money.

I have traditionally charged 1.8%. And the management fee of 1.8, I came to
it like this. I either use individual stocks or extremely low expense ratio
ETFs and I’m managing it myself. So I don’t have any platform fees. So what
I’m in effect doing is I’m eliminating the middleman. And so where, if you
use a separately managed account, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with
using separately managed accounts, but you have to pay somebody to manage
that money for you and for your client. And so what I’ve done is I’ve just
taken the responsibility of managing the money. And for that, I get the
whole fee. So if you charge, and if you were selling a mutual fund platform
and the mutual funds have expense ratios of 1.5 and you charge one and a
quarter, that’s 1.75 right there. And so we’re in the same ballpark. So I’m
in the same ballpark as everybody else, but I just choose to divvy it up a
little differently. I choose to give the little portion to the ETF funds and
then take the rest for myself rather than divvy it up among separately
managed accounts or other platforms.

Like I said, there’s nothing wrong with doing that. I just find that
managing money doesn’t take a whole heck of a lot of time especially when
I’m using ETFs. So I can just capture that cost.

Don Patrick: And I’m assuming you learned how to manage your money in your
prior careers at Morgan Keegan, and Edward Jones or not Ed Jones, but

Mike Irvin: Yeah, A.G. Edwards

Don Patrick: A.G. Edwards.

Mike Irvin: I would say that I learned how to sell investments at those
firms. I learned how to, I learned how to sell a stock, buy a stock, sell a
bond, buy a bond, but I wouldn’t say that I learned how to manage money
there. In fact, when I came over for Morgan Keegan, all my money was managed
by Morgan Keegan.

And so this is something that started in 2012 when I came over. I actually
started when I was here. And the way I started was I wanted to cut those
costs. And moving firms was a good time to make that change. I basically
took Warren Buffett’s, teacher, Benjamin Graham.

I took his book, The Intelligent Investor, and he’s got a chapter on if you
want to manage your money yourself, how do you do it? And he recommended a
mechanical approach. And so I built a mechanical approach and just did it
from there. I just basically plagiarized the approach that Benjamin Graham
recommends. And that’s about all I did.

Don Patrick: So it’s a value approach and how do you screen for companies
and stocks to buy?

Mike Irvin: Mostly the value approach is ETFs. And so I’m just using really
index ETFs. I don’t do a whole lot of stocks. I do have some clients that
prefer individual stocks and so I’ve got a few of those, but they’re not
notable at all.

It’s vast majority. 99% of the money is ETFs. And so I’m not, I’m going with
the old fashioned, “You’re not going to beat the market. I’m not going to be
smarter than anybody else. As long as I don’t make a huge mistake, I’ll be
okay.” approach.

Don Patrick: So let’s, you mentioned Madge Caldwell a couple of times. She’s
an executive coach consultant and why did you hire her? What were you trying
to accomplish?

Mike Irvin: Every year we have the the annual retreat, the Integrated
Financial Group Annual Retreat. It was at the Westin that year and we were
sitting in the room and all week long I heard people going, “Yeah, well, I
had Madge and Madge doubled,” my income and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And another person would say, “I work half as much as I used to.” And
another person would say, “I doubled my income and got rid of all the
clients that didn’t make me happy.” And all these people were so happy. And
I remember you actually, you went around the room at the end and you said,
“What are you going to take away from this conference?”

And I raised my hand to the answer and you handed me the microphone and I
said, “I’m just going to hire Madge.” And everybody laughed. But two weeks
later I was in Madge’s office and we were going to town. That’s how I got to
Madge. It was by realizing that all the big producers in our office have
been influenced by Madge.

Don Patrick: So that must’ve been somewhat of a shock. It’s two hours a
week, correct?

Mike Irvin: Yes, it is. Well, no, it’s way more than that because it’s two
hours a week with Madge, but then you have all the prep and the preparation
time. I mean, it is, you are an executive, you are a CEO and Madge treats
you as such. And so, yes, it’s two hours a week with Madge, but if you’re
going to hold a two hour meeting, think about how much preparation would go
into it if you had to lead a two hour meeting.

And that’s how much time goes into working with Madge and it’s worth every
minute of it.

Don Patrick: So obviously you’re happy with results. What did you get out of
the relationship with her, the coaching?

Mike Irvin: Well, I tell you, I mentioned earlier that I had a value
investing approach. Well, as we all know, value has been out of favor for
what amounts to a generation now.

I had a lot of clients that were not happy, they weren’t happy with the
investment performance and I didn’t know what to do. I was losing clients
and it just wasn’t a happy place. The clients weren’t happy. I wasn’t happy
and I didn’t know what to do. And Madge caught on to that really quickly
when we talked and she kind of put in emergency procedures and said, “All
right, we’re going to stop the bleeding first.”

And she did. Within a month, client stopped leaving and I started getting
referrals and my day to day life was less stressful. And my wife enjoyed
being with me because I wasn’t stressed. And I had time for my kids. And I
mean, not that I didn’t have time and not that I was always a jerk with my
wife, but you know, when you’re stressed, you’re not the best version of you
typically.

And I got back to being the best version of me. So I got my life back
together and it also doesn’t hurt that I doubled my income. So we’re very
good.

Don Patrick: So what were the emergency procedures in place to stop the
bleeding?

Mike Irvin: What happened was, I said that I’ve worked with Georgia Power,
and when I started the business and as I was building it, I was building it
with Georgia Power employees and they were really in two buildings.

So when I moved from Morgan Keegan to IFG, I literally went to two buildings
to get all the signatures to move my business. It was very quick and very
easy, but then those people retired and they don’t live in Atlanta. The
corporate headquarters is in Atlanta, but I had clients in Villa Rica and
Franklin, North Carolina and Macon, Georgia and Valdosta and Athens.

I mean, just spread all over. And this was, you know, remember this was in
the time before Zoom. And so everyone expected to see you in person for
meetings and everybody expected phone calls and the like. Well, I now was a
road warrior. I had gone from having my business, I’ll be in two buildings
to traveling the length and width of the state all the time to meet with
clients.

And so when I had a kid and I got married and had a second kid and now I
didn’t want to be a road warrior and I will admit to letting those meetings
slide. And I really didn’t know how to handle the meetings because the only
thing I was talking about was investments. I wasn’t doing financial
planning.

And so the clients weren’t happy. The clients, if they were met, if I was
meeting with them, they weren’t happy with the meeting because all we were
talking about was why their investments weren’t doing as well as the market.
It was an ugly, ugly time. And Madge put in emergency procedures where she
got me on a call schedule and got me to ask the clients, I mean, very simple
things. “What do you want? How often do you want to meet with me? Does it
need to be in person?” And what I found out was my clients really didn’t
want to meet with me all that much. They wanted to talk on the phone. And so
I put in a call schedule and I started calling them regularly and I started
financial planning for them all. And they started really, they went from
being upset and agitated to really happy. And it changed my life and changed
my family’s life.

Don Patrick: So it is very simple. “What do you want, Mr. and Mrs. Client?
What are you looking for?” What a concept, right? So you start employing
financial planning, which is really what it’s about.

The money management’s a piece of it. Did you convert many of your existing
clients who were investment only to financial planning clients? How did that
go?

Mike Irvin: It was a slow process. You can’t have a client for 15 years and
then all of a sudden change the rules of engagement on them. You can’t be
talking all the time about investments and then start talking about all this
stuff that the client’s never heard you talk about before.

It would be jarring. And so Madge had me go through it in a methodical
process. I think she guided me to, and I can’t remember how we came up with
it, but she guided me to a thing that I eventually called my financial
planning levels. And so it was five different levels and I’m not even sure I
can remember what all the levels were, but you know, the first was, did you
have a financial planning questionnaire on file, you know, had I asked all
the financial planning questions, and there were just different levels. And
once they got up to five, they had everything. I was meeting with them on a
regular basis. I was doing annual reviews with them. I was doing semi annual
reviews and quarterly calls and they had a financial plan and they had the
questionnaire.

It was like five different levels of things that they did. And once we got
everyone to five, I realized I had a financial planning practice and I never
looked back, but it wasn’t like I took everyone from one to five in the
course of a year. It was a course of two to three years where I introduced
the planning concept to older clients and then the next step I would
introduce a couple more concepts and then finally I’d kind of deliver a more
robust plan and then we’d start every conversation was talking about their
financial plan and reviewing their financial plan instead of just reviewing
their investments.

Don Patrick: I love it. What tools, if any, do you use for financial
planning?

Mike Irvin: There are a couple. The big one is, I think it’s called
ClearPath. It’s my beta vest, but I call it my retirement income plan. I
think it’s called ClearPath though. It’s a really unique financial planning
software, fairly basic, but what it does is instead of you telling the
software what return you plan on getting, what it does is it puts the
returns for each year and each asset class and embeds them in the financial
plan. And it says, “Okay, if you had retired in 1926 with this amount of
money and this amount of inflation and your account and you needed this
amount of income and the financial markets did like this from 1926 to 1956
and you had a 30-year retirement, would you still have money at the end?”

And then it does it 1927 to 1957 and rolling 30-year periods. And so you get
a, in my opinion, a better look at what would have happened had you used the
strategy that you’re currently using. And so I have my finance, my
investment management process embedded into that software. And so I can tell
clients, “This is a closer look at what you can expect.”

And rather than, “Okay, I think I can get you 6%,” and then plug that in as
a flat 6.

Don Patrick: So it’s a real stress test based on historical performance,
rolling 30-year periods is pretty typical for a retired client.

Mike Irvin: Yeah. And I think I, if I had to describe it, I think I’d say
it’s between a Monte Carlo and a put in whatever return of investment you
think you can get. I think it’s somewhere in between those.

Don Patrick: Became a pretty good networker, correct?

Mike Irvin: They’re certainly better. I would love to say I’m a master of
that. There are certainly a lot better than I–I have become a lot better
than I was. I have enjoyed that. That was a skill that Madge really
introduced me to.

And you think you know how to deal with people and you think you know how to
network, and then you meet someone like Madge who shows you the real way.
And so I’ve certainly gotten better. I would not say I’m an expert by any
stretch.

Don Patrick: So, what are some of the basics in networking that she taught
you that you’ve employed?

Mike Irvin: The biggest one? It’s just to ask, like, I mean, I know it
sounds so simple. Everything Madge does is simple. The biggest thing was
just to ask. I was so terrified that I wouldn’t be able to reciprocate, that
I wouldn’t ask. I would ask for referrals. I’d ask how I can help people,
I’d ask what they’re doing in their business that they needed, what’s
important to them.

I mean, just literally ask for what you need and ask for what they want and
give it to them as much as you can give it to them and continue to ask them
for what you need so that you’re top of mind when they need to, when they
have the ability to give it to you. I think that was the major part of what
she taught me.

Don Patrick: Simple but powerful.

Mike Irvin: Yeah, simple and powerful. And then she had me track it. Again,
like we were talking about the metrics. She had me tracking who I was
talking to, how often I was talking to them, when I was talking to them,
when referrals came, where the referrals came from. That was another lesson
that Madge taught me.

It doesn’t always come from where you’ve been working. There’s this mystical
force in the universe that I may be networking with five people over on the
east side of town, and then I get two referrals from the west side of town.
If I hadn’t been networking on the east side of town, those referrals would
have never come from the west side of town.

But they didn’t come from the east side of town where I expected, where I’d
been putting all my work in. They came from a totally different direction.
And I don’t understand the force. I don’t understand what it is. I don’t
understand why it happens, but it happens. And when you stop networking, you
never get the referrals from the East or the West.

And the second you start networking, you start getting them from places you
never expected. And that’s a lesson that she taught me that has paid
dividends because it keeps me networking. It keeps me working.

Don Patrick: It’s so true. I like the way you couch it as the force. It’s
kind of like an aura. But it’s the force, but it is, it’s just floating out
there and you’re stirring things up and it’s amazing what happens. Tech
Stack. So you’ve got ClearPath for financial planning tool. What do you use
for a, do you use a CRM?

Mike Irvin: I do. I use Redtail. I say I use Redtail. I use it very
minimally. I’ve got myself an incredible virtual assistant.

So there’s not a whole lot of workflows that are necessary. It’s basically,
he knows his jobs. I know my jobs and we just do them. So there’s not a
whole lot of using the workflows or anything like that. I use it as just a
really basic contact management system. Here’s my name and my phone number.

And that’s about all I use. I use for when to follow up with people, I use
Excel. So I’m not really using Redtail to its fullest by any stretch of the
imagination. I have a couple of other things that I use. The biggest right
now is going to be Horse’s Mouth, The Savvy College. I just got that and
it’s going to be life-changing.

So that’s going to be something I’m going to be living in for the next year.
And I’m really excited about that. I have some other things that I probably
won’t be using. I subscribed to Hedgeye, which is a really in-depth market.
It’s like hedge fund research and they do really, I think, good work, but
it’s just too fast-moving for me.

I don’t need it. And so I probably won’t be using that again. I actually got
a while back and it’s running out. I got a Dun & Bradstreet subscription
that cost me a fortune, but it got me, I now have basically every lead that
I could ever want.

Don Patrick: Oh that’s interesting.

Mike Irvin: Yeah.

Don Patrick: So that’s how I like that.

Mike Irvin: I needed to be able to find the names and phone numbers and
direct cell phone numbers of people so that I could call and that became
the, that was the way to do it. They were the only ones that I found that
had those numbers.

Don Patrick: That’s fascinating. I had no idea. So, in terms of staffing,
you mentioned you’re using the virtual assistant program. Anything else? Is
it unit virtual assistant? Or what does that look like?

Mike Irvin: It’s like having magic happen behind the scenes. There’s some
guy and he’s behind the curtain. It’s like Oz. His name is Greg Cobb. And he
and I worked together in person for the six years, for six of the years that
I was down in Columbus.

He was fantastic. Unbelievable. He was my banker at Regions Bank. And
anytime Regents screwed up my account or something went wrong, he would say,
“Mr. Irvin, I’m so sorry.” He’d say, “May I have your driver’s license for a
second?” He’d take my driver’s license and he goes, “Would you give me three
minute, and I’ll be right back in three minutes,” and I’d say, “Sure.”

And he’d walk out and he’d come back in and he looked like a butler. He was
Ramrod straight with a perfect suit. And he’d hand me back my driver’s
license and he’d go, “We’re all set.” And he’d come back a minute and a half
later. He’d asked for three minutes and come back a minute and a half later.
And he had my problem solved.

Well, I realized that Regions, I have a problem with Regions once every six
months. I’ve got problems every day in my own business that I need solving.
And so after two years, I was able to hire him away from Regions. He became
my in-person assistant when I was down in Atlanta, or down in Columbus.

And when I moved back to Atlanta, I didn’t have an office in Columbus. And
so we’ve been using him as in the virtual assistant program for the last
year or two. And I mean, he’s just wonderful. Now the whole, all of IFG
knows how awesome he is. And so he’s kind of getting The recognition he’s
deserved for a long time.

He’s just wonderful. But he keeps me on the straight and narrow. He talks to
my clients. In fact, now a lot of my clients just call him. When I’m calling
my clients, they’re—“Well, how’s Greg doing?” And they ask about him. And I
mean, he’s just wonderful. So the virtual assistant program has been great
because it’s pay-as-you-go. And so you’re splitting the cost among a lot of
your friends. I did not need a full-time assistant, but I certainly needed
an assistant. And so instead of paying his full salary, now it’s spread over
five of us and it works a lot better

Don Patrick: And you don’t have to hire. You don’t have to manage, you don’t
have to train. All that. So I’m going to go back to your planning process
more. So on the review cadence, it sounds like you’re having quite a few
phone calls and maybe quarterly meeting. What is a typical, so you get, you
have a financial planning client, put the plan in, and now we’re doing
progress review meetings.

What does that look like throughout the year, the cadence?

Mike Irvin: Sure. Mostly it’s the actual review meeting is once a year. I’ve
found that my clients just didn’t really want to talk about it that much.
Doing it quarterly or semi-annually was just too much. And they didn’t seem
to be enjoying it.

And so what I do now is I kind of, I asked them how often they wanted to be
called. And they for the most part told me, and for the most part I kind of
came up with in general about once every four months is when I need to be
calling my clients. Obviously, it can be different for anyone but my clients
seem to get along well with about every four and in some cases six months
with one of those being a full-on review of their plan.

We always start with, “What has changed over the last year,” asking that and
then going into what has happened in their accounts and what has happened in
their plan, what they have accomplished this year. So if they were charged
with getting a will or getting advanced medical directives, has that been
accomplished?

Have they done that? If they haven’t, then I can step in and say, “Hey,
would you like me to go set up that appointment? Or would you like me to
make that phone call? Or would you like me to help shop that insurance for
you?” They get one meeting. to accomplish all those things. And then after
that, I’ll step in if necessary to help them help facilitate that.

And then we talk about the actual account and how it’s done and how it
affects their plan. And that has changed everything. I was totally
investment-related before, and that was why clients were upset. It was all
about the investment. What has the percentage, has the account gone up and
by what percent, and then how does that relate to the market?

Now it’s, what has happened to your account and how does that affect your
ability to remain retired at age 85, at age 90, at age 95? And so those
investment numbers have an actual meaning and it’s less about, “Well, it
went up 9% but the market went up 12, so we’re losing.” Now it’s, “Hey, last
time the software said you have a 98% chance of, of making it to 95 years
old and still having money in the bank. Now the software says you’ve got a
99% chance.” So, your account only went up 4%, but you went up a little bit
in percent chance of historical success. And so it’s just a different
conversation. So that’s how it happens. And then we go through and the last
part is what are we going to do this year?

What are the things that we should look at? And I usually have between two
and three items that I kind of want to focus on with the clients as a whole
each year.

Don Patrick: I love it. Well, I’m going to wrap this up with a couple of
questions. And the first one is to use three words to describe your talents
and strengths.

Mike Irvin: There are a couple of different ways I could answer that. I
could answer that on what are my talents, and I could answer that to
describe those talents. And so if I said, what are my talents? I’d say they
are imitation. My best skill is that I’m really good at imitating people. I
take the best of folks and I can learn to do what they do. And if they’re
doing it at a world-class level, I can at least learn to do it at a very
good level. So, always been really good at imitating. That’s a talent of
mine. I’ve always been good at finding good mentors.

So I guess that goes hand in hand with, that talent goes hand in hand with
being able to imitate. I found you in the beginning of IFG. I found Madge. I
found a guy named Peter Vogel when I was starting to play guitar. And Peter
Vogel led me into that. When I played tennis, I had a mentor.

His name was Emmanuel. And I had another one named Dave Newhart, and they
taught me two totally different styles of tennis and mentored me there.
Obviously, Madge mentored me. I had a mentor when I was at Robinson
Humphrey, a guy named Hudson Garrett. So I’ve always found really, really
good mentors all the way up.

And I’ve got a nose for that. And then it wouldn’t be a talent, it’d be a
strength, would be what you said earlier, just being persistent. I’m
persistent at everything. And so that, that would be more of a strength than
a talent, but that would, those would be my three strengths. If you asked me
to describe them, I’d say that I’m varied in my talents. I’m artistic in my
talents and I’m academic in those talents.

Don Patrick: That’s a great description. That is excellent description
because that is you. And great advice. Mentoring. Imitating. Persistence.
The artistic part, that’s a harder one if you don’t have it, but you have
it. You’re very creative.

Mike Irvin: Well, I thank you. I thank you for letting me be on this show. I
really do. it’s been a pleasure. It’s like a therapy session.

Don Patrick: It’s a lot of fun. We learn so much from each other. I love
these things. So, I’m going to ask you to tell us something about yourself
that others don’t know.

Mike Irvin: Whew. I think a few people know this, but, intentionally, not a
lot of people know this and maybe I shouldn’t say it out loud, but I
actually love to distill my own whiskey. I learned how to make and distill
whiskey. When I was in college, we had ATF-authorized stills, licensed still
at my college, and they taught us how to do it.

And I just absolutely love the artistic work of it. I barely drink at all,
but I just love the artistic nature of, and it’s very zen to watch the
alcohol come out drop by drop every second. It’s very fun. So not too many
people know about that. And hopefully, the feds aren’t going to know about
it.

Don Patrick: I didn’t know about it. That’s fascinating. I love it. Mike,
this has been fantastic. I learned a lot from this great conversation, a lot
of great advice for everybody out there. And thank you so much for taking
the time and effort to do this.

Mike Irvin: I’ve really enjoyed it. Thank you for having me on.

Don Patrick: All right. See you, Mike.