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, everybody, to the IFG Consortium Podcast, What Works. Today we’ve got Bain Nickels. He is president of Nickels Wealth Management, which was founded by his father and is located in Columbus, Mississippi. Not Georgia, Columbus, Mississippi. Hey, Bain. Welcome.

Bain Nickels: Thanks, Don, for having me. It’s a pleasure to join you this morning.

Don Patrick: Well, I’m excited about this. There’s a lot of pretty cool things about you and your life and your practice that I think all of us are going to be very interested in. So I guess that kind of get things going here. Tell us a little about you, your family and that sort of thing. Just let us get to know you a little bit.

Bain Nickels: Yeah, well, I love the opportunity to talk about my family. First and foremost, I’ve been blessed with a wonderful wife and life partner in Kelly. We’ve been married for 17 years and she’s just a great life partner. Makes my life better in every way.

God’s given us four boys. We’ve got a 4th grader, a 5th grader, an 8th grader, and a 9th grader. So, as you would imagine, our schedule gets filled up pretty quickly with their activities, which is a lot of fun. My older two boys, Ross and Reed, eighth and ninth grade, they’re into baseball and soccer and golf and hunting and that sort of thing, younger two boys and similar, baseball and golf.

And we all like to go to Mississippi State ball games together and enjoy that and just a lot of fun, just a lot of fun.

Don Patrick: That’s amazing. So, four Boys, do you have a membership at the emergency room? Like a monthly dues or something?

Bain Nickels: You know, it’s funny, they’re certainly, they’re boys in every way. And we’ve had the wrestling matches that have resulted in broken bones, and all, you know, chipped teeth, and all the things that you would imagine. So, yeah, we spent our fair share of money at the dentist and over the years, for sure.

Don Patrick: Yes, that’s amazing. That’s fabulous. That is wonderful. How great. I love it. What’s kind of interesting in the consortium, it seems like there’s just a lot of girls and even Land, you know, he’s the only guy in the family and you’ve kind of reversed that. We can have a dating game going on, maybe.

Bain Nickels: The way that works, we don’t get to choose that a lot of times, right? So when my wife and I, our last son that was born, we chose not to find out if he was going to be a boy or a girl. It was a lot of fun.

And of course, another boy was born and we were ecstatic. Yeah. We kind of knew what to do with boys.

So I’ve got some nieces though. So I’ve got, I get some practice on some girls as well.

Don Patrick: Oh, that’s great. So let’s talk a little bit about you and the business, the profession, and really kind of how you got started. Your father founded the firm. So how did you get involved in the business?

Bain Nickels: Yeah. So I worked with my father throughout some of the summers in high school and even college and knew early on that this was the type of business that I thought I may enjoy. So I went to Mississippi State University, got a degree actually in insurance, risk management and financial planning, and really had intended, Don, to start out at another firm, maybe in Jackson, Mississippi. I’d interviewed with a few firms, and as I got closer to having to make that decision, I talking with my father, I landed right back here in Columbus.

I actually started my career, first full-time job outta school was right here in the firm I’m in with now back in 2005. And it’s certainly evolved and it’s changed over the years, but it’s been a good fit. I tell you, I give my dad a lot of credit when I started, he really kind of put me on my own and said, “Look, you gotta make it happen.”

Don, he guaranteed me $500 a week to make sure I could at least pay my apartment rent, buy a few groceries. But outside of that, he blessed me with the opportunity to go do it, kind of do it on my own. And it was, as a young guy, it was really a struggle at times, you get out of school and you think you’re smart and you think you know something.

And what I realized pretty quick was I didn’t know much. And the only people willing to hand over their life savings to me were young guys that had about $50 a month to invest. And it was kinda hard to make a living off that. So anyway, I had to pivot in the first few years. I really dove into insurance and in particular, back in 2005, that’s when Bush and the Congress enacted the Health Modernization Act, which as you know turned Medicare upside down, gave us a lot of new opportunities.

I really made a study of all the drug plans and the Medicare Advantage plans and the Medicare supplements. There’s a lot of people out there that were confused and needed help and really made a living probably the first two or three years just selling Medicare products.

Don Patrick: So you actually found a niche very early in your career and most of us are all looking to find a niche where you have a few advisors who have them. So you, yeah, he just threw you in the frig pool and said, “Go swim kid,” right?

Bain Nickels: He did. And I didn’t fully appreciate it at the time, but looking back and I see a lot of wisdom my father had and doing that for me and really allowed me to kind of do some things and really build some confidence.

And of course, the Medicare realm was one that a lot of the, you know, more seasoned advisors didn’t have an interest in pursuing, which really gave me more opportunities as a young guy to really learn that business and find ways to help people. And of course, being in the business, just being in front of people and those open doors leads to additional opportunities. And I certainly found that to be true over the years.
Don Patrick: Well, that’s very impressive. The old saying goes, particularly the way you got started, if you’re there five years from now, I mean, that’s very impressive. So let’s talk a little bit about how your career evolved, the firm and so on.

So you start off, you’re a young guy and, yeah, that’s about the only way you can do it. It’s going to be selling disability insurance, life insurance, and you got into the full advantage and Medicare kind of area and that sort of thing. So what’s the next stage of your career in the business?

Bain Nickels: Yeah. So, I obviously got, I got my license, security license in ‘05, so it’s kind of a dual role, but really making a living doing the Medicare the first, I’d say two, three, four years. The background I was brought into, so my father and a couple of guys he was working with, they had an insurance background, which was really very much a sales-oriented organization.

And Don, I think you and I talked in San Diego about this briefly, here a few days ago, but four or five years in, I just wasn’t having a lot of fun. I wasn’t enjoying the business and really tried to quit on a couple of occasions. And what really, we’ll talk about this later in the podcast, I’m sure.

But what really got me over the hump was Nick Murray and learning his philosophy and that just kind of broke down things for me and opened my eyes to see things in a new way and really helped me transition from a sales guy to more of a financial planner, which certainly we consider ourselves today. And obviously, that transition happened probably 10, 12, 13 years ago, somewhere in that timeframe.

Don Patrick: So your dad’s basically an insurance guy, sales guy, and you’re not happy. And then you discover Nick Murray and that transforms you. How were you able to implement that in your father’s business? It was such a yin-yang, it seems like.

Bain Nickels: Not without tension. There certainly was a sense of, you know, there’s an old way of doing things and then there’s a new way we’d like to do things and there was some tension that we had to work through there, but we kind of found a path and found a way to kind of each do our own thing for many years.

And it’s a process, right? None of us figured this out overnight. It’s a process that’s obviously still very much evolving, very much evolving today.

Don Patrick: You’re a very polite guy. You said tension. I’m sure it was a little stronger than that once in a while. Maybe I’m totally wrong.

I don’t know. But yeah, that’s a very normal thing. The younger people, fresh ideas come in. The seasoned people say, “No, I know how to do this.” And that’s a very, very normal thing we see. Not just as a profession, any profession. So what was it about Nick Murray that impacted you so much?

Bain Nickels: Yes, it’s hard to know where to start with that. So, let me kind of back up. So for years, kind of under the sales approach, where I found myself, Don, was like the other guys really meeting with every wholesaler that was willing to buy us lunch. And every product seemed like the best product and over time what that turned into was we sold so many different companies and funds and insurance products.

And we had an eclectic mess. Every client had different portfolios, different types of investments. There was really not a lot of synergy there. And in my value proposition was very much on the investment side of,

“Hey, look, come invest your money with me ‘cause I’ve got this great product.”
And the reality of how that works out is, more times than not looking back, I picked the wrong stuff, right? And so if my value proposition to my clients is picking the right investments and being smart enough to know where to put their money, and that doesn’t work out. Like in many cases, it did not, that’s kind of put me in dark spots.

It put me in a place where I was struggling to figure out what is my role? How do I bring value to clients if my value isn’t picking the right investments, and my clients were paying me to do that, and now the investments aren’t performing up to their or my standards. What kind of career is this?

And so what Nick Murray did was really opened my eyes to see that’s not what our role as financial planners, financial professionals should be. He opened my eyes to see that the dominant factor in any investor’s success long term has very little to do with which large-cap mutual fund they’re in and very much has everything to do with having a plan and having the discipline to stick to that plan through all the highs and lows of the markets over many years. And so once that light bulb kind of went off, I said, “I can control that. I have every bit of control over making sure my clients have a plan.” The discipline to stick to that plan, that’s certainly up to the clients, but I can do my best job of educating clients to make sure that that happens.

So really just changed things for me. It opened up. So many new doors, so many new avenues. We went on this year-long journey that we’re still on today to, with that new process and new, that pattern of thinking in mind, I said, “Okay, let’s simplify as much as we can simplify that we have no control over. So that we can truly spend as much time as possible focusing on the things that we do have control over.” So that’s when we started using models as opposed to individual investments. And that’s the process, Don, you and I talked about in San Diego as well. How do we continue to refine and simplify that?

And then the planning side, if we’re not talking about Investments for an hour and a half at all of our meetings, what are we talking about? Well, now we get to talk about tax planning strategies. We get to talk about estate planning. We get to talk about insurance planning. We get to talk about things that really we can have an impact on that I think ultimately moved the needle.

Don Patrick: So, well, I guess my first question, have you ever sent Nick Murray an email this year with them? How it changed your life?

Bain Nickels: I’ve sent Nick Murray several emails over the years, thanking him for his advice and thanking him for his continual guidance and also asking him questions. And if you know Nick Murray very well at all, he’s pretty direct and sometimes appears to be rude, but that’s just kind of his personality.

And I think that plays into his success. His directness towards advisors, it gives him confidence. I think in many ways, it’s given me confidence over the years and continues to, and that confidence that comes from him to us as advisors, in turn, I think, gives our clients confidence to stick with the plan.

Don Patrick: Yeah, I agree. I call it caustic. I’ve met him a couple of times. He’s amazing. I’ve been a Nick Murray fan for decades now. I love his newsletter. I know you subscribe to it, Bain. And, I really like the emails that he, when he responds, he just rips people apart and is like, “Haven’t you been listening son?”

Bain Nickels: Yeah.

Don Patrick: So it sort of sounds to me like you’re sort of self-taught yourself, all this stuff. Your dad obviously wasn’t a mentor. Did you have anybody in your life besides Nick Murray who just start trying to figure things out? How’d that go?

Bain Nickels: No good idea is original, right? I mean, the things that we have implemented here and had success with have really been stolen ideas from Nick Murray and people like yourself and others that we meet at conferences.

Carl Richards is another guy that I’ve followed a good bit. He’s kind of maybe the more modern-day Nick Murray in a way. I’m a very visual guy. And if you know Carl Richards, he’s the guy that describes very complex topics on a napkin in a very simplistic way. And so I’ve learned a lot of things from Carl as well.

And then really just a lot of successful advisors like yourself and others over the years, just not being afraid to ask questions, not being afraid to make phone calls, not being afraid to send emails, listening to podcasts, reading books, just trying to pick up bits and pieces from different sources.

And God made us all unique. And so I think the challenge is being hungry and finding these different nuggets in different places and being able to bring them together to kind of formulate your own plan, your own strategy, your own way of doing things. And obviously that continues to evolve as we strive to improve each year.

Don Patrick: That’s amazing. So you are, you really are self-taught. And you went out and you continue to go. I know you do and learn and improve and tweak, but you did a 180 on your father’s business on your own. I mean, that’s pretty amazing. That’s very impressive. At least in my–

Bain Nickels: I don’t like to think of it on my own. I mean, certainly, my dad taught me a lot of good things that had been impactful, and we continue to this day. And then certainly I’ve got an incredible team here that we’ll get into later in the podcast, I’m sure, that I bounce ideas off of, and we kind of just figured it out together over the years.

And so it’s, you know, but certainly I’ve been surrounded by a lot of good people, a lot of good relationships that I’ve benefited from.

Don Patrick: That’s great. So timeline, I mean, you’re running the place. You were there, you guys said three, four, five years, and then you started seeing the light about financial planning and ran across Murray, started reaching out to people. And so, in terms of the business timeline, well, you’re running the business now, correct?

Bain Nickels: I am.

Don Patrick: You’re the president. So what’s the timeline and all that with, you and your father and how that all took place and transformed?

Bain Nickels: Yeah, good question. So came on in ‘05, it’s just an individual advisor.
So the business model back then was my father owned the business, owned the building, paid for the staff, and then everybody had four or five advisors that kind of worked in individual silos and they just paid my father up an overhead or a fee to take care of the overhead. And so that, that kind of rocked on for many years.

And my dad officially, my dad had a heart event in 2009, had open heart surgery, scared us all. I went and got my OSJ, my 24 at that time. He ended up staying in the business. part time and then officially retired fully in 2018. So six years ago. But we had really already started transitioning the business to more of a financial planning focused business, I’d say probably in 2011, 2012 is probably kind of when that journey started.

Certainly looks a lot different today than it did then, but I’d say that’s kind of when the light bulb started going off for me. 2016, was fortunate enough to bring along another advisor, Tracy Bryan, who, Don, you met. And she came over from one of our competitors and really had a very similar financial planning, Nick Murray mindset, which she was just a godsend.

Her and I’ve been really have grown the business in many ways together. She’s helped me so much see some new things. Anyway, just a great fist. The 2016’s when she came over and we certainly added some additional people since then we can talk about, but I would say 2012, 2013 is probably the timeline of when kind of the light bulbs really started to click, really started to go off and we’ve taken off from there.

Don Patrick: And how was your dad with that transition? Did he embrace it or was it a threat to him? How did that go?

Bain Nickels: It was a challenge at times, mainly because with the advisory businesses, as we all know, we’re paid fees and there’s not a big upfront commission.

And so it takes time to build that. And with the insurance background, that mentality is you go out and kill something and you eat really good that night, right? And so it was a slower process to build that out. And so there were some challenges that went along with that, but as we started having some more success, I think he saw the value in that and it kind of got a little bit easier as time went on.

Don Patrick: Well, that’s great. That’s because again, it’s always, There’s always some friction between the young people and the, what I call the seasoned folks, because I’m one of those seasoned folks. So, I mean, this is really, I mean, you’ve built this thing. It’s very impressive. And to literally take the firm and do a 180 on it, obviously didn’t happen overnight, like you said, Bain, but very impressive.

And so you started doing more investing and maybe financial planning. What did that look like in the early years and what does it look like now? And are you using software, whiteboards? I mean, how are you doing it back then? How do you do it now? How have you evolved?

Bain Nickels: Yeah, great question. So we’ve tried it all. One thing I think is so important is to, and one thing

I appreciate about you, Don, you mentioned that you’ve been in the industry for a long time and a lot of people that have been in the industry a long time like yourself, They kind of get stuck in the old way of doing things and don’t keep up with the new things, new technologies, the better ways to do things in many cases.

And I’ve appreciated that about you and your open mind. And from what I understand from my limited time at IFG is in many ways, you kind of not only embrace that, but you drive that so that’s very commendable. And that’s, our journey certainly has evolved and continued to, as we started thinking about financial planning, we started using some softwares, WealthVision in particular with LPL and what I have found with our clients, Don, is that the 20, 30, 40-page financial plans that over the years I’ve spent hours and hours trying to put together, I don’t know that our clients saw the value in those documents as much as I hope they would.

And so in line with Carl Richards, as I mentioned earlier in trying to simplify things, I have very, very much simplified our process and our planning to a whiteboard. I’ve got a whiteboard I’m looking at here in my office that’s about three feet tall and about six feet wide. It’s just a big board.

And what that looks like when clients come in, whether it’s a prospect meeting that we worked through an initial plan or whether it’s a client I’ve had for 15 years and a long-term client. I use a bucket strategy on a whiteboard. Basically, I put their name at the top, their age, draw an arrow kind of indicating that, “Hey, whether you’re 30 or whether you’re 60, we still got a long way to go,” right?

This is a long-term plan we’re working on. And then I just lay out their buckets. How much cash do we get in the bank? How much we got non-qualified assets, Roth IRAs, 401ks, IRAs, all the different buckets we all use, show money going into the buckets in terms of contributions, money coming out of the buckets in terms of distributions, debt, life insurance, estate planning, risk management, health insurance, long term care, all their income streams. So we just kind of put it all, all on the board so that I can see it, they can see it, and we kind of worked their financial plan from there. And in more cases than not, whenever we get through with our meeting clients, they whip out their iPhone and say, “Hey, can I take a picture of that?”

And so, early on, I would have thought that there’s no way I, you know, you can have a multi-million dollar client and not give them a sheet of paper. But what I have found is whether it’s a small client or whether it’s a big client, they like simplicity and they like to see it. And we found in our office that a whiteboard, we can accomplish, for most things, we can accomplish financial planning that way.

And certainly, there’s cases where there’s further more in-depth analysis that needs to be done that we do use in software, but typically that’s not something that I’ve put in front of clients.

Don Patrick: So I totally agree with you. I’m in the same mindset and we’ve had the conversations as well.
I know when I used to bring on new clients, it’s been a long time because you can only have one, one group of folks to serve and that’s been the IFG folks. But I would tell a prospective client what the relationship is going to be like. And I described it in terms of going to a doctor’s office.

And so number one, I hate medical terminology so speak English to me and make it simple in that regard. If there’s a diagnosis, if there’s something that needs to be worked on, let me know what my choices are, cause I know there’s going to be choices. Lay them out very simply for me. And then, most importantly, tell me your recommendation and why.

And I sure as heck didn’t want a 50-page pamphlet to take home with me to read. And you’re absolutely right. So, in terms of retirement planning, which is a multi-decade process, are you doing any, using WellFish or anything behind the scenes before you put this whiteboard on? How does that work?

Bain Nickels: Yeah, generally not. So going back to the bucket strategy, depending on the client’s age, especially for retirees that retire say in their late fifties, early sixties, we try to keep withdrawals at close to 4%. We talk about the importance of that. Then we use the bucket strategy from that.

We certainly believe in a mostly equity strategy for longevity reasons, even for our retirees, but because of the sequence of returns risk that we’re all fully aware of, we try to keep four to five years of living expenses and something more conservative to draw down from when we have these market pullbacks that we’re all familiar with.

And so that’s kind of the strategy that we have used and it seems to resonate with people.

Don Patrick: Yeah, I mean, buckets and we’ve had this conversation, but there, basically, in the old days, when I was getting going, it was a pie chart and people get cross-eyed. “How do I get money from this?”
And buckets are just, oh, it just lays out their whole life ahead of them. They see it. It’s just simple. It’s powerful. And a 6040 portfolio is probably seven or eight years out of the market. You’re probably running more like a 7030, which sounds to me like. So this whiteboard, how long does it take, do you prepare it or do you have somebody prepare that for you? I mean, how long does it take?

Bain Nickels: No, I usually do it. And it’s kind of my way of preparing for meetings. We have our annual planning meetings, clients coming in. And I get all my notes from. from our CRM and I prepare their whiteboard so that whenever they walk in their financial life is right there before them.

And I like doing that because it kind of helps me get in the right mindset and reminds me of all the nuances of each individual couple that we’re working with prior to them coming in. So it doesn’t take long, maybe 10 or 15 minutes to get all that put up there. And I just really try hard to simplify it as much as possible.
I think we as planners, we do either a great job or a terrible job, however you want to look at it, of sometimes complicating things that don’t have to be complicated. So kind of our mantra around here is let’s simplify everything we can simplify.

Don Patrick: And you are speaking to me. I absolutely love it. And I know in a client meeting, I mean, what I used to do, I’d say, “Okay, we can lift the hood up and really tear this engine apart. Is that what you want?”

And 98%, I don’t need no eyes. They just want to know they’re okay, what they need to do and have a basic understanding and that’s all they want. That’s all most people want, unless they’re an engineer.

Bain Nickels: Don, we probably spend, without exaggeration, we spend no more than five minutes actually talking about the investments and I would say 90% of our annual meetings.

Don Patrick: That’s really the way it should be. ‘Cause it’s about their life, their goals, their passions, their concerns, their challenges, and it’s a financial plan and investments.

They’re a big part of it. It’s the engine, but it’s a part of it. That’s very impressive. And you’ve, again, I go back to you found Nick Murray and you’ve been on this, evolution, this path and reaching out and learning. And yeah, Carl Richards is amazing. To put all this together, it’s very, very impressive.

And of course, I love what you’re doing. It just speaks to me for sure. And, I think, yeah, I did share as well, I’m not going to go. Back in my beginning for their computers, but so do you take a snapshot of that whiteboard and then put it in the CRM when you’re done? Or how do you track that?

Bain Nickels: Yeah. Great question. So in our CRM, we have a field that we call our investment policy statement, which really is just a snapshot of everything in our client’s life. And it’s a running list that I keep updated every time I talk to a client. So it’s got all the things on the whiteboard.

It’s got all their buckets. It’s got the income, the distribution details, life insurance, estate planning, CPA, all that information kind of in one place. And so I keep that in our CRM. So any conversations that I have with a client throughout the year, well, I immediately pull that up on our CRM and update any numbers, update any changes that we make.

And so that way, whenever it’s time for our meeting each year, I can pull up that and I always know that I have the latest, most updated information. So that’s generally manually put into our CRM, either by me or one of our team members.

Don Patrick: I love it. So you’re working off the 4% distribution rule. What do you use for an assumed rate of return?

Bain Nickels: Yeah, great question. So, I typically use somewhere around 7% as an assumed rate of return.

Obviously, we’d be very disappointed if our long term returns aren’t in excess of that. 7% is not guaranteed, but I feel like that’s a reasonable assumption for a long term portfolio with at least 70% inequities.

Don Patrick: Yeah, I would agree. So in terms of CRM, what are you using for CRM?

Bain Nickels: Yeah, so we’re using Redtail right now. I’m very satisfied, very happy with Redtail. I hear of several IFG advisors that have made the swap to Wealthbox, amongst other advisors I’ve talked with.

And so that’s something that’s on the table. We’re considering Wealthbox, but Redtail that we’ve used probably the last 10 or 12 years.

Don Patrick: Okay. So I know when we’re in San Diego, we’re discussing, you’re looking at an Asset-Map now as a possible addition to your suite?

Bain Nickels: Yeah. So Asset Map is one that I’ve been wanting to use for some time.

However, they have not been approved with LPL. I understand they were recently approved by LPL and I really intend to kind of build them into our annual planning meetings as a way to give clients a one page summary, similar to what I put on the whiteboard, but just having it in a more professional format, something we can hand to clients to take with them.

Don Patrick: And it’s more automated because it has feeds, doesn’t it? Isn’t it? interface with custodians and such. I’m not sure I know that much about it. I know high level about it. I like it.
Bain Nickels: I’m not sure the answer to that question, Don. I know that there will be a lot of information that will need to be manually inputted in terms of outside accounts and debts and things of that nature, as far as LPL accounts, whether or not they’re integrated with Asset Map, I’m not sure.

Don Patrick: So let’s talk about how you, so we know how you went out and got clients in the beginning the hard way, like most of us did. So how do you get new clients today? Are you marketing, referrals? What does that look like?

Bain Nickels: Yeah, great question. So this is an area that I think we probably have a lot of room for growth.
We really have not had a thoughtful, well executed plan here other than let’s just try really, really hard to do a great job for our existing clients and hope to tell somebody and we’ve been able to grow through referrals and we certainly are very appreciative of those. And we’ve got some, one in particular, a center of influence CPA that sends us people and that’s nice.

But in terms of a well thought out marketing plan or referral strategy to ask for referrals, that’s really not been part of our process the last several years. but as we’re trying to grow and bringing on new team members. That’s an area we’re looking closely at. And a couple of my team members are working with Jason with IFG, and he’s helping us with the rebranding strategy and marketing strategy that we’re hoping to implement maybe going into 2025.

Don Patrick: So your referrals are, you just do a bang up job with your clients, they love you, and you don’t actively ask for referrals or introductions. They pass, basically it’s a passive approach, but they’re coming.

Bain Nickels: They’re coming. And I really give our team a lot of credit for that. We work really hard to take good care of our clients.

One thing in particular that we have really put an emphasis on the last several years, Tracy has been a big part of this, is asking ourself the question, how can we benefit this client in ways that has nothing to do with the assets under management fee that pay us. And let’s try to find every way that we can do that.
If that means going to the Social Security office with a client, sign them up for Social Security. If it means taking care of their COBRA when they’re retiring and they’re not Medicare eligible, just if it means going and helping a client buy a vehicle, I’ve done that before. Just trying to find every unique way to bring some value to the table outside of what they pay us for.

And that’s certainly, we’ve had seen some positive results from that. Suzette in our office, she’s the relationship manager and she works really, really hard with gift experiences for our clients. so we try to tune our ear to any major milestones in clients lives, which I know a lot of advisors listening probably do as well, and she does a wonderful job of personalizing gifts, which really goes a long way with clients. And to be real frank with you, Don, I get credit for that. In many cases, clients call and thank me for the gift. And I’ve got to look at my notes to see what we sent them because Suzette really just has taken ownership of that and done a great job. So we try to dote on our clients, really make sure they know how important they are to us.

We try to make sure that we’re doing a great job. It’s not about just letting them know we care about them, but also the solutions that we’re providing and the planning have to be top notch and that’s where most of my time is focused to make sure that we’re doing a good job there.

And the results from that is happy people tell others that we’ve benefited from that.

Don Patrick: That’s absolutely correct, Bain. That’s great. So very high touch. And so you’re obviously, you sound like a good business person. You know how to delegate, you know your strengths. So with Suzette, is it automated in the sense that things pop up in the CRM and Suzette says, “Oh, an anniversary is coming up.” Or, “I need to go find a gift.”

How does she know there are particular events coming up? Is it an automated process? Just listening? And how does that work?

Bain Nickels: Yes, some of both. So our job in our annual planning meetings and just talking to clients throughout the year is to define those moments, right? To find out when that grandchild is going to be born, to find out when the client’s going to retire, to find out when the big surgery is coming up, to listen for those moments.

And when Tracy and I find those moments, we just set an activity in Redtail for Suzette for maybe a week prior to that event happening. So it pops up on her activity list so that she knows exactly who the client is, what’s going on. And so Tracy and I are manually setting those in many cases.

And then other things are automated. For example, we work with a lot of retirees, a lot of widows. And so like if we’ve got a widow client, her husband died on January the 9th of 2018. Well, we set it up automatically where on January 8th of every single year, Suzette gets an activity to send that client flowers the next day in memory of their spouse passing away.

And so if there’s recurring things like that, we try to set that up where nobody has to think about it, but it just happens.

Don Patrick: I love it. That’s the way it should be done. That is fantastic, Bain. So you’ve gotten a referral from a client. What does that look like onboarding a new prospective client?

Just walk us through how that looks. Is it a phone call? Do they come in the office? Is there any kind of screening? And just what does it look like?

Bain Nickels: Yeah, so this is an evolving process and when we’re–like everything else trying to continually refine. So where we are today is Suzette is taking those phone calls as our relationship manager.
She typically handles the initial call. She’ll answer any questions they have, find out what’s on their mind, she’ll then send them a final, what we call a financial profile, which is really just a three page fact finder. What’s important to you? What’s on your mind? When do you want to retire?

How much income do you need? Where are your assets today? Those types of things that we all use. So she’ll send that out prior to our initial meeting, and then we’ll ask that client to either, ideally send that back to us prior to the meeting, or at the very least bring that to the meeting with them.

And then she’ll set up the initial meeting with either myself or Tracy or account, or sometimes both of us.
Don Patrick: So the initial, So you and Tracy do meetings together sometimes as opposed to separately? Is that what I’m hearing?

Bain Nickels: Yeah. So a lot of times we will just depending on kind of the referral source and where the business came from.

We work together jointly on a lot of clients, especially initially. And then over time, generally one of the two of us will gravitate towards handling the annual planning meetings going forward. But we generally both meet with a lot of clients. Sometimes just her, sometimes me.

And then from that initial meeting, gathering the information, then we’ll have a follow up generally a week or two later. And our whole onboarding process, Don, sometimes can be as few as two meetings, and sometimes it may take three or four meetings really just based on the complexity of the situation, where the client is and what they’re looking for.

Don Patrick: So, and that initial meeting, you’re obviously gathering data, but I assume it’s more than that.
Bain Nickels: It’s very much a two way street. Going back to Nick Murray, I used to feel like that I had to serve everybody and that I had to accommodate everybody. And that I didn’t have the confidence to think otherwise.

And he really has given me the confidence to have my own well thought out plan, my own well thought out strategy of where our business is headed, who we serve best, what type of clients we enjoy working with, what type of clients we’re a good fit for, and just the opposite, what type of clients we don’t enjoy working for, and what type of clients we’re not a good fit for.

And for years, I had zero confidence to be able to have that kind of conversation with a prospective client. And so we certainly go through that, Don, with prospective clients of the type things that we believe in. We’re not market timers, believe in long term plans, long term strategies.

We have very frank conversations. If you’re looking for me to be smart enough to know when the market’s going to be up or down and to get you in and out at the right times, then we’re simply not a good fit. We don’t want any of your money unless you intend to leave it at least four to five years.

I tell clients that money they invest with us is a hundred percent liquid. They can get it at any point in time. I’ve got to do my job for them day one, day two, year two, year three. There’s no penalty to take it out, but don’t give it to me unless you intend to leave there at least three to four years.

So we have those types of conversations and just kind of our expectations. We talk about communication styles, communication rhythms. If we’ve got a client that’s very, very technical and wanting to have annual progress and, I’m sorry, quarterly progress meetings and wanting to get together all the time to talk about investments, tell them we’re probably not your guy, right?

We’re probably not a good fit. So we try to, again, this is an evolving process, Don, and this is not something we’ve always done, but it’s really freeing to be at the place where you can look at somebody in the eye and genuinely tell them, “Look, we want the best for you. Here’s what we offer. If this sounds like a good fit and something you can get on board with, we’d love to have you as a client. And if not, then we certainly wish you well and no hard feelings.” And we’ve had to have some of those conversations over the years. But looking back, I can’t imagine doing it any other way going forward.

Don Patrick: Yeah, that’s actually, Bain, that’s a pretty normal evolution. When you’re getting started, if they fog a mirror, you take them. And it is so liberating to get to that point where you only take on the folks that fit well. So I think it was Pareto who came up with this one. I use the term mutual selection process, but that’s basically what that first meeting really is, sounds like.

Bain Nickels: It is. It is. It’s a mutual selection process. And most of the times, Don, the people that come in our office are referrals from our existing clients that already understand kind of how we do business and they’ve kind of prepped them. And so, I mean, generally we find people, it’s a good fit. But in the cases that it’s not, then we walk away and they walk away and nobody’s upset.

Don Patrick: So it could be two meetings, it could be three or four meetings, and now they’re onboarded as a new client. What does that look like? How do you communicate? Do you lay out a roadmap? Emails go out, letters, cards, phone calls, what does that look like?

Bain Nickels: Yeah. So for new clients, once they become a client, we talk about the expectations, kind of what they can expect from us.

So generally they get a handwritten note from me, just thanking them for their trust and looking forward to the partnership going forward. Lucy on our team, she generally would follow up with the account view a month or two later and make sure they’re set up for account view and seeing their accounts online if they wish to have that.

Suzette, she helps us with our client segmentation calls. So she sets activities for Tracy and I to reach out to these clients on a periodic basis. So our larger relationships, they get reached out to generally by phone call or email on a quarterly basis. Some of the other clients, maybe semi annual.
And then all of our clients, we have the annual planning meeting. Like I mentioned earlier, we used to do quarterly meetings and really got away from that. Those were nothing more than performance reviews, which was not helpful to anybody. So we went to annual reviews or annual planning meetings, as we call them.

And that tends to work out very well. So in terms of cadence and communication from us, clients, they get the annual planning meeting, they get periodic phone calls or emails throughout the year that are scheduled by our team, usually Tracy or I make those phone calls. I do a semi-annual letter every year.
I do one January 1st and one, July 1st. Much of the content in that letter comes from Nick Murray. He provides kind of some scripts. I’ve done, I know you’re familiar with that. And so I use his scripts and add my own personal touch to that, send that out to clients. That’s twice a year. And that’s really what our clients get, and I think for the most part are happy with that.

Don Patrick: So you’re doing everything the right way. You’re really using the CRM the way it’s supposed to be used, you segmented your clients and you have different levels of service and communication for the various segments. I mean, this is the holy grail of how you run a business and take care of clients. It’s very impressive.

Bain Nickels: Well, it’s an evolving process and certainly I mentioned it several times, but it’s our team. We’ve got a really, really professional, competent team and we’re all open minded and trying to learn from the other guys, right? What’s everybody else doing well? And how can we bring that into our business and get just incrementally one step better every year? That’s kind of the mindset we’ve had and continue to have.

Don Patrick: So we’ve got a pretty good idea of what your progress meetings look like. And so now you’ve mentioned the team, who hires them and who manages the team?

Bain Nickels: Yeah. So it’s kind of a group activity. So we’re a team of eight. We’ve got four staff.
So I hadn’t mentioned Lucy much. Lucy is our director of operations. She happens to be my sister. And I would tell you, Don, this business would not run without her. She has got her fingers in every part of our business. We brought her on back in 2011 as the director of marketing, I think is the title, which who knows what that meant at the time, and it wasn’t too long after we brought her on as the director of marketing that our long-term operations manager, she moved out of town with her husband.

And so we threw Lucy into that role. And she has just excelled in every way. She’s hardworking. She’s got the get it done mentality. And so she really has her hands on every piece of our business. Her and I, in terms of the hiring probably starts there. And then we certainly get input from the other team members as well.

So we’ve got actually two new hires. We recently hired Shiloh. So Shiloh is our director of first impressions. We had a great director of first impressions for years, a lady named Evie Smith, she retired after 20 plus years with us. And so we’re happy for her retirement, but sad to see her go.

But recently brought on Shiloh just within the last couple of weeks. She’s been excellent. So far, we feel very fortunate to have found her. I think she’s going to be a wonderful fit. She doesn’t necessarily have financial industry experience, but she’s got a lot of customer service experience. So we’re anyway, really, really excited for her.

Also recently hired Spencer, who you met in San Diego, Don. Spencer was an advisor that I actually met and found on LinkedIn. He was operating by himself as a young advisor, which we all can appreciate how difficult that can be. And so he and I met for lunch a couple of times and one thing led to another, and so he’s been with us a couple of months and I think he’s got an extremely high ceiling.

Kind of his role now is really just more as a service advisor to learn the business, see how we’re doing things, bring new ideas in our business, but all the intangibles he has, the integrity, the hard work, extremely smart, extremely capable, wonderful attitude. So he’s got I think what it takes.

He just needs some time experience and we’re going to work hard to try to develop him and see what his role turns into. So those are the two new hires, which I’m really, really excited about in addition to those two. I mentioned Suzette, and Lucy who really both have their hands in most everything we do and do a tremendous job at it.

Don Patrick: So you’ve got eight folks total, three advisors, including you, or is it four?
Bain Nickels: Well, including me, there’s four, so myself and Tracy, and then there’s two advisors, Danette Starks and Ernie Blackburn, who have been with our firm a really, really long time. As a matter of fact, Ernie Blackburn goes back with my dad probably 40-plus years.

Super guy. He keeps us all laughing and entertained around here. He’s on the back end of his career. He’s working part-time, but certainly happy to have him around and super, super guy. Ernie’s an advisor and then also Danette Starks. Danette’s been with us probably 20 years or so and she also works part time.
She’s not in the office every day but does a good job for clients and we support her and her business as we can and as she needs us to.

Don Patrick: Well it sounds like you have a great culture there, what you’re describing and of course listening to you, I get that. That’s one heck of a business you’ve got there.

I’m very impressed. So you joined IFG first part of 2024 around February. I think you started transitioning January, February at that time. If I got that right.

Bain Nickels: Yeah. So kind of the timeline there. So we’ve been with LPL since 2009. We’re under the corporate RA. We, I mentioned to you, Don, I got my 24 as an OSJ and realized pretty quick that I don’t have any interest in spending my career reading other people’s emails and doing the things required of being an OSJ. And so we joined up with another hybrid RA back in 2016. And just over the last couple of years, as we’ve grown, just kind of felt the need to look at other opportunities and what’s out there and really made the decision, I’d say, about this time last year, maybe summer of last year that we were wanting to make a move to a different hybrid RA. I had two groups in mind, Don, two other firms that I was looking at, and then I was actually at an LPL conference out in California.

My wife and I were, and happened to see a guy wearing an Ole Miss sweatshirt and me being a big Mississippi state fan, you don’t see a lot of Mississippi out in California. So anyway, I went and talked to the guy and he was a super nice guy. And we got to talking and that guy happened to be Keith Smith.
Keith Smith and I kind of hit it off out in California and he mentioned IFG and anyway, one thing led to another, we added IFG to the list of firms we were considering. Last year at Focus, I did not go but did send Tracy and Suzette were able to get at Focus and one of their items to accomplish on that trip was to meet with all three of the firms that we were considering, IFG being one of them.

And to be real frank with you on my list at the time, IFG was probably in third place. The other two firms were actually, the payout, the economics were a little bit stronger. And that was obviously high on my list to consider. And so going into that, IFG was third on my list and, but I asked them to check everybody out and come back and report.

And so they got back in town after Focus last year and I said, “How’d it go? Did you meet with all the groups?” And yeah, they did. And it was just very, very clear and evident to them that IFG was different and I had enough trust in Tracy and Suzette and in their opinion. That meant a lot to me and that’s really where we started the process of seriously considering IFG based on their experience with you guys in San Diego.
And then from there had the opportunity to meet with Lan. Lan made a home office visit here to Columbus and obviously met with you and with Andrews and just really with you guys, the culture that you describe as the Brain Trust, we were able to see that in action and really more than that, more than the sharing of ideas, just the quality of people that we want to be associated with.

We felt like that you guys were our kind of people and just really felt that connection and every interaction, Don, we’ve had since then kind of further confirms that Tracy and I and Suzette had a chance to spend time at dinner with John and Tim at North Carolina outside of the restaurant there.

And Monday night just laughed and had a good time and just, anyway, just for the confirms, we made a good decision, but the official date to answer your question was April 1st of this year is when all that went live.

Don Patrick: Okay. Yeah. I know there’s a lot of paperwork transitioning and that sort of thing, but I love the description because that’s how I look at us is we all do things a little bit differently and, you know, from a big picture looking down where we’re all doing financial planning.

But what I can tell people and promise them is that you’re going to like the consortium members. They’re good people. And you’re good people. You’re a great fit. And you’re running a really good business. Very impressive to have gotten to where you are and how you’re running it. And you clearly have a great culture or you wouldn’t have the kind of longevity you have with your team members.

Very impressive, Bain. So we’re going to kind of wrap this up a little bit. I think we’ve learned a lot about you, your business, how you do things. So I’m going to ask you to use three words to describe your talents and strengths.

Bain Nickels: Don, in preparation for this call, you asked me to do this and I found it to be kind of a challenging task to find three things that I think I’m good at.

So what I did was I asked two of my team members, asked Tracy and Lucy, “”What do you think I should tell Don here?” And the one thing both of them said is building relationships. And early on in my career, you think you understand the importance of that. Looking back, I don’t know that I really fully understood what that looks like and what that means. Life is so connected, right? And the small moments, the ones that don’t matter are really the ones that matter the most in many cases. And I’ve just seen that in my career thus far how one small thing leads to another small thing, which leads to a big thing, right?

And it’s just so connected. You’ve been in the business a long time. You know exactly what I’m talking about. And one story, one quick example of this. So back early in my career, I don’t remember the year. I’ve probably been in business three or four years. I mentioned to you just trying to make a dollar, trying to stay in the business, selling insurance.

And somehow I got the door open to look at some life insurance, first CPA in our area. And I looked at his insurance and was able to help him save some money, so that was a good thing. He said, “Man, why don’t you look at these other CPAs, have similar policies. Why don’t you look at theirs and see if you can save them money?”

And I said, “I’d love to. Thank you for the opportunity.” And so one of the guy’s policies I looked at, looked at it, evaluated it, asked him some questions and came back to him a few days later and said, “Mark,” said, “I appreciate the opportunity, but I can’t help you. You need to stay right where you are.”

And really didn’t think anything about it. That’s just kind of, that was the truth and kind of went on about my day. Well, one thing led to another and Mark called me and started sending me business. And I asked him one day, I said, “So Mark, what changed here?” And I didn’t know the guy very well at the time.

He said, “Bain,” he said, “I met with you.” He said, “You were the first guy that I’ve dealt with as a salesman that looked at me and said, ‘I can’t help you.’” And it seemed like such a small thing at the time, but I’ll tell you, Don, today, I can’t tell you the number of clients and the millions of dollars that we manage that somehow are connected to the CPA name, Mark, that all came from that one event years and years and years ago.

And that’s just one example of just the importance of building relationships, doing the right things at all times, noticing people. People want to be noticed. People want to be treated respectfully and honestly. And if you do those things, one small thing leads to another small thing, which leads to two big things.
So I would say building relationships is one thing that we try to work hard at, that Lucy and Tracy both mentioned. And one thing that I picked out was really curiosity. And we talked about this. I think in our business, as you have some success, the temptation is to get lazy. The temptation is to get comfortable.
And it’s easy to do that. And I think that’s a dangerous place to be. I think being comfortable is probably the most dangerous place to be. And so just being curious of what’s out there, how can we improve, how can we get better at every stage of the game? Whether we’re starting out, we’re in the middle of our career or we’re at the end of our career I think we’ve got to stay curious. And I like to think that that’s top of mind for me on a regular basis.

Don Patrick: Fabulous advice, Bain. That is great. You’re so right on that. And we’re going to wrap this up. I want to thank you so much for taking the time and the effort to participate in this podcast. There’s so much for all of us to learn from you, and can’t thank you enough.
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.