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: Hey, everybody. Welcome to episode number 42 of the IFG
podcast, What Works. And our guests today are Morgan Shank of Morris Shank
Wealth Management in beautiful St. Louis, Missouri. Welcome, guys.

Morris Shank: Hello.

Morgan Shank: Welcome to be here. Thanks for having us.

Don Patrick: Yeah. And so Morris, you go by Moe, M-O, or M-O-E, or Morris,
correct?

Morris Shank: Yeah. You’re the only one that does Moe, Larry, and Curly,
M-O-E. But I like it. It’s just I know it’s from you. M-O.

Don Patrick: All right.

Morris Shank: My grandma and my aunts and uncles called me Morey.

Don Patrick: Morey, I don’t like that.

Morris Shank: Yeah, I know. Okay, good. Let’s let that one go.

Don Patrick: So I’m going to start off with just having you all share some
of your background, family, growing up, hobbies, and some more. I used to
use the word “seasoned citizen.” My mother a couple weeks ago shared a new
one with me. She’s 96. She told the doctor she’s old. He says, “We don’t use
that word here.” And so I’m going to go with you first, Morris, and, I
forget the word now.

Morris Shank: Well, my mother is a seasoned citizen. She’s 93.

Don Patrick: Oh, they’re one year apart. I love it.

Morris Shank: And she’ll kick my butt in gin rummy, but she can’t remember
what we’re doing tomorrow.

Well, up until fourth grade, my parents were in the plumbing, heating, and
cooling business in a small, rural Illinois town they grew up in. And to
hang out with my dad, I really tagged along as a plumber’s helper on service
calls. What that really meant was running back and forth to the truck for
tools, ’cause he was stuck in the crawl space.

But even better was if I would anticipate what tool he needed, because then
the plumber’s helper, and then also then he would, he’d ask me to go again.
And our extended family of aunts, uncles, and cousins would go to the
Mississippi River, the muddy Mississippi River, every Sunday after church to
boat and ski. Of course, mosquito bites were all part of that. And that led
to an annual vacation to Lake of the Ozarks, where we got to do that all
week. And then one summer we bought the resort. I was pumped.

Don Patrick: Yes.

Morris Shank: Oh, wow. Well, the pump part was every week a new set of
families would come in with kids, and then half of the kids wore bikinis, so
that was great. And it was a 20-unit family resort, and our slogan was,
“Come fun with us.”

Don Patrick: I like that.

Morris Shank: And then by the age of 14, I was putting customers’ boats in
with a Willys Jeep. And the story I like to tell about that is I’d have to
sit on a boat cushion so I could see over the windshield, and then another
boat cushion behind my back so I could reach the brake, clutch, and gas
pedal.

And when I’d hop out of that Jeep, the look on new customers’ faces when I
went around to put their prized vacation boat, and hook it up to that Jeep
with this scrawny guy, it was pretty priceless. But fortunately, there’d be
another customer around and they’d say, “Oh, it’ll be fine. You just don’t
want his mom doing it.”

The resort happened to be located right around the cove from a water ski
show that my brother and I longed to be a part of, so we both joined that
show after selling our resort. And then after first trying to buy the show,
we ended up starting a new show instead, and that led to me becoming the
show director and general manager for the next 12 years until we sold the
real estate.

So point of that, really, it was a 20-year drenching experience in small
business, self-employment, and community relationships. And to this day, I
can, would say some of those stories and experiences still resonate.

Don Patrick: And you guys performed in front of the King of Jordan, the King
of Jordan? Is that correct?

Morris Shank: Well, what happened is once I got out of college, I ended up
basically working year-round, and I would go to Florida in the winter for
training in skiing, and I joined Cypress Gardens. And one year, Cypress
Gardens wouldn’t take their full-time employees to the best trip of the year
to Aqaba, Jordan to ski for King Hussein’s birthday, so I got to go as a
part-timer one year.

Don Patrick: That’s amazing. Your spouse of many decades, Mary, was also on
the ski team with you, correct?

Morris Shank: Mary and I were summer sweethearts in this water ski show
business, and we went to the same high school. Her sister was a classmate.
But we were four grades, three years, so we had no interaction other than
the summers. And she was 12 and I was 15 when we first started, and as she
would like to say, the thought at that time of ever bearing our children
with that scrawny guy, no, thanks.

Don Patrick: So you do have children. You got two boys.

Morris Shank: Right. Two boys, Mason and Nicholas, a four-pound Maltese
puppy named Gus, and a 2007 Ski Nautique. That’s our family.

Don Patrick: I love it. Any other hobbies besides water skiing and boating?

Morris Shank: Special projects.

Don Patrick: Special projects. I thought you used to snow ski.

Morris Shank: I used to snowboard.

Don Patrick: Snowboard. A shredder.

Morris Shank: My son Nicholas coaxed me into that. He said, “Dad, you
gotta…” When he learned how to snowboard, he and I had skied a little bit,
and he said, “Dad, you gotta learn how to snowboard.” I go, “Well, no, I
don’t.” “Well, yeah, you do.” And, so I did. It was not a great idea. It’s
really painful to learn snowboarding when you’re 50.

Don Patrick: Yeah, ’cause you’re falling all the time, right?

Morris Shank: It’s just those falls are hard. I have a snowboard in my
garage with a sign on it that says, “RIP.” I went last March, took another
face plant, and I said, “I think I’m done.”

Don Patrick: We’re done. That’s good.

Morris Shank: Yep.

Don Patrick: Well, Morgan, so just so everybody understands the relationship
that don’t know you, you are Morris’ nephew.

Morgan Shank: Correct. My dad is Morris’ older brother.

Don Patrick: But if somebody didn’t know all this, they would probably
consider you and Morris being your dad.

Morgan Shank: We get that a lot.

Don Patrick: Yes.

Morgan Shank: We get that a lot. In fact, the other day, we had Nick on the
phone, or I had Nick on the phone, and it took Nick five minutes before he
figured out that he was talking to me, not Morris. So we get that a lot, not
just from family, but from clients too, that, yes, we do sound alike. And
that’s kinda, I wanna say, part of the plan that we have associated with it.

So, my story also starts at Lake of the Ozarks, kind of in that small rural
town area. I also grew up in that small business mindset. My first job was
working for a summer resort too, where we did all the work that nobody
wanted to do, to make that happen. But my passion was always martial arts.
So I grew up wanting to be a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle. Loved kicking and
punching.

And I wasn’t very good at it until I got to be about 14 or 15, and then I
found out, well, what I’m good at is teaching and I’m good at helping
others. So by the time I was 15, we had a small little location school. It
wasn’t really a full business, but it was a small business. The owner was
there only one day a week. And when he was, the other day of the week, my
mom would drop me off at age 15. I had a key to the door. I would open the
door. I would teach classes for the night and lock it up. So at 15, I was
already helping run a business to kinda make that work.

By the time I was 18, they had me convinced that I could run a martial arts
school. And by doing that, my parents wisely said, “Well, first you’re gonna
go to school.” So I went to the University of Missouri where I got a
business degree, but the whole time I was still teaching martial arts and
helping run the locations and intern, and they’re small businesses. So I
also have that small business deal.

And then immediately came out of school and leveraged everything I had,
including everything my dad had, to open a martial arts school in St. Louis,
which our organization at the time didn’t have a presence in. So I came out,
“Here we go. We’re gonna do it.” Made that my business project. My capstone
project was actually that: how to make it all work here in the St. Louis
area. I ate peanut butter and jelly for three years.

‘Cause you don’t have anything to do as we built that business and really,
developed it. The organization that I’m a part of is what’s called ATA.
People may know what ATA Martial Arts is because it’s the largest
single-form martial arts organization in the world. There’s 1,200 locations
internationally, and we were one of those licensees. So it’s a lot like the
IFG model.

Don Patrick: I love it.

Morgan Shank: And we can kind of get into that later about the consistencies
between that. I’m my own business owner. I own my location. I own the
martial arts school. But I’m part of a bigger group network—another brain
trust—that allows us to share ideas and develop and have a community too. So
we’ve worked ourselves up to be one of the top 20 in that organization. They
tapped me to sit on the International Business Council where I helped
develop a lot of the teaching that goes out to other licensees to help them
develop their business. So I sat on that council before making the
transition to financial planning. And we opened a second school.

Well, here’s the funny story about the schools, just to give you the hard,
kind of truth about it. So I opened our first school in 2006, exactly 18
months before the ’08, ’07 meltdown.

Don Patrick: Mm-hmm.

Morgan Shank: It was our first school. We made it through that. And then I
opened our second school January 1st of 2019, exactly 14 months before the
2020 meltdown. So I’m never opening a martial arts school again, unless you
want fire and brimstone to come down on the world.

Don Patrick: We’ll just short the market if you open one up.

Morgan Shank: Yes.

Morris Shank: I’ll show him the door.

Don Patrick: The fact that you survived COVID with martial arts is
extraordinary. I have no idea how you did that.

Morgan Shank: We were on a dime, switching and matching, and this is really
where our network came in because we actually saw it coming. Our friends in
Portugal were about a week and a half ahead of us, and so they were in
Europe and they were having to already adjust to Zoom and adjust to how they
were gonna teach. So they were doing that.

And then we saw it work its way from the coast to the center of the United
States. And so our friends on the outside, we could already see they were
three or four days ahead of us, which at that time was light years ahead
’cause they had already figured out technology. They figured out how they
were gonna do it. They were moving, they were shaking. So having that
network allowed us to really hone that in and deliver a product to our
students at the time.

Don Patrick: That’s impressive. So you did it via Zoom, figured out how to
do that?

Morgan Shank: Yes. We had satellite locations with, we built studios in each
one of my instructors’ basements, and we ran through Zoom, and we had a
person that all she did was basically organize where it’s coming from and
where the feed is coming from, who’s in the classes, who’s in—it was
logistically a nightmare, but that’s what we had to do. We figured it out.

Don Patrick: Amazing. Amazing.

Morris Shank: It is amazing.

Don Patrick: Well, Morris, tell us how you got started in this business. I
mean, you’re both small business entrepreneurs, a lot of background in it.
And by the way, Morgan, at age 15, to be so wise to figure out you wanted to
teach, that’s pretty amazing.

Morgan Shank: Yes. It’s always been my passion, for sure. I love kicking and
punching, and then I love teaching too. And I love that.

Don Patrick: So Mo, tell us how you got started in this crazy business.

Morris Shank: Well, same theme. I’d always thought I was going to be
self-employed, and it is why I majored in accounting, although I really
wasn’t well-suited to be in the College of Accountancy. After I’d had a
five-year run as an equity partner in a property services business—it was
decent size, four million in revenue, 100 employees, 35 trucks, about 20,000
site visits a year—the equipment operations heavy business was eating me up.

I like to tell the story, if you look up human resources in the dictionary,
there’s a subcategory called failure, and then in that subcategory of
failure, that’s where my picture is. I just took things way too personal. I
could never let it go. So I forfeited this equity ownership and moved on.

My father-in-law had bought Mary and I a $1,000 mutual fund for our wedding
present, and then shortly after that he gave me a book on financial
planning. And Mary and I had engaged with an equitable agent who really had
a great financial planning focus, and his influence, along with my mom’s
neighbor, who’d been constantly bugging me to get in the financial services
business, had convinced me that this would be a good business to get into.

So at age 35, with a young child and another on the way, I joined a
broker-dealer insurance agency office run by Jay Anderson, who was the
general agent. And Jay assured me that they were planning-based and that
he’d be there for me, and he honored both for the next four years until his
death. He and his wife, Patty, had left New York City on their way to Paris
when TWA Flight 800 exploded shortly after takeoff. Previously that morning,
I had witnessed their signatures for their estate planning documents.

Don Patrick: I remember that. They didn’t have any estate planning, and I
think it was one of their friends that said, “You gotta get this done.”

Morgan Shank: In fact, we keep that as a memory. Back there on Morris’s desk
is actually a little plaque dedicated to them. He’s probably got that, but
there’s a little plaque dedicated and just shows how we kinda keep memories
of things and that’s something that’s probably influenced that, hey, we need
to be mindful of those situations, and things can happen.

Morris Shank: Let me read this plaque. It’s a picture of Patty and Jay. It
says, “The most fortunate people on earth are those who have found an idea
that’s bigger than they are, that moves them and fills their lives with
interest, aliveness, and struggle, and who go from one purpose to another
all their lives.”

Don Patrick: It was sad. It was tragic. Jay was a wonderful man. But I mean,
that whole thing was bizarre.

Morris Shank: Anyway, so nine months after getting started, Mary and I had
our dinner out business update meeting. And naturally, I gave her the good
news, bad news option. She said, “Bring it on. Bad news first.”

Morgan Shank: And wait, wait, wiat. Before he gets too far, here’s something
you need to know about my Aunt Mary. Her nickname is Sweet Mary. She is
probably the—and anybody that’s met her probably knows—she’s about one of
the sweetest people in the world.

Don Patrick: She is.

Morgan Shank: So let me just give you that. And she’s always been that to my
cousins, to me, to everybody. She is the sweetest person. Okay, go ahead,
Morris. Keep going.

Morris Shank: Well, but then there’s people gonna say, “But why did she
marry Morris, Morgan?” So that’s the part.

Don Patrick: ‘Cause she’s sweet.

Morris Shank: I guess so, ’cause she’s tolerant. Anyway, she said, “Bad news
first.” Well, I had spent the $20,000 that we agreed on. Now, that was $92,
$90, $92, and I’d made $1,500 after nine months.

Don Patrick: Oh, my.

Morris Shank: Well, of course she wanted the good news. “I love it. It’s
going to be fine.” And instead of a mic drop moment, it was a fork drop
moment. Dinner was over. Out the door we went.

What she could not have known, and what I didn’t know for sure, was my
confidence level about how things were gonna play out. I was assured I was
doing everything right: 10 appointments a week, getting referrals, and had a
couple lateral file drawers full of files. And really soon after that, it
started paying off in tandem with, of course, a very intentional five-year
push.

And I do wanna also take time to compliment Mary because she’s always been
admirably supportive of my business interest, and there was a point in time
where she hung in there through some poor continued employment and some very
tough jobs, and really that was for continuity of our family’s health
insurance.

Don Patrick: Ah.

Morris Shank: And then of course she gives me great advice like, “Be
yourself, but not too much.”

Morgan Shank: For any of you that know Morris a lot, you’ll get that well.

Morris Shank: So I try to take that advice most of the time. And then
similarly, Morgan and I, through these three years that we’ve been doing
this, early on Morgan volunteered that he was ready for “five-year hard,”
and so that is consistent with the first five years of a business like this.
It’s hard.

Don Patrick: So you skipped a number of years here. So you’re in your first
five, you’re in your first five years. You’re loving it.

Morris Shank: Yeah.

Don Patrick: Finally starting to make some money.

Morris Shank: Yeah.

Don Patrick: And just kinda give us more of the progression.

Morris Shank: I think it was figuring out that there was more to the
planning than products, and it was really, I bought a software, Juncture, in
2000, and the Juncture software.

Don Patrick: CRM

Morris Shank: Yeah, the CRM. And the Juncture software allowed us to start
tying these things in that we were doing these workflows in a structured and
organized manner. So when I got to the point of hiring somebody who
basically took over the software and the workflows, then I could really just
focus on the meeting and the relationships and coming up with these things
that we now call microservice deliveries that tie people in in a better way.

Don Patrick: So was that first hire financially scary?

Morris Shank: First two hires were not because they were part-time,

Don Patrick: Okay.

Morris Shank: But they were also not capable and not what I needed. So the
first full-time hire was a little scary. Fortunately, I got lucky with the
first full-time hire who I remember when I was gone, she’d be standing
around talking to people, ’cause she really didn’t have anything to do
because she had gotten things so organized. And people would say, “Marcus,
Karen, she’s talking to us, and she didn’t have anything to do.” I thought
to myself, “I don’t care. Great. That means things are going good.”

Don Patrick: That’s great.

Morris Shank: In fact, she was so good that it was kinda boring for her and
then she moved on. And it’s been a pattern that it would take two or three
hires to oftentimes replace an excellent hire, and I’m not telling anybody
anything that they don’t know.

Don Patrick: Very true. So I know you made a few changes and you went
independent. Kinda walk us through that a little bit.

Morris Shank: The main thing on that was I had been an insurance
broker-dealer and I was kinda getting tired of all the compromises that are
involved. And of course, I’m not telling anybody anything that they don’t
know. And there was a period where I made three broker-dealer changes in 10
years.

Don Patrick: Ouch.

Morris Shank: So the first 10 years with the same one, and then shortly
after that, it was 4.5 years because I’d said, “I don’t think I can do this
longer than five years,” and when 4.5 came along, I’m done. And then I
joined IFG, and then we made a broker-dealer change within about four years
after that.

And the main thing about being independent is literally being independent
and not alone. I often have said to anybody that would be interested in
going independent, you do not wanna be independent and not alone. And so
because of my relationship with some former insurance broker-dealer advisors
who were already with IFG, it was a natural, fairly easy transition.

Don Patrick: So Morgan, any other hobbies besides kicking and punching?

Morgan Shank: Well, just like everybody else in the Shank family, I’m an
avid water skier, right? Love to barefoot, love to do that. And then kids,
that’s a hobby in itself. I think anybody’ll tell you that running, chasing
all the various kids and what those are, so. My wife and daughter and son
and other son, so my wife I married, she’s got two a little bit older kids,
and then we have a son who’s 12, and so we chase them around pretty hard.
Which is nice. But they’re all in martial arts and we really enjoy it a lot,
so.

Don Patrick: And your wife’s, she’s been very involved in the business,
correct?

Morgan Shank: So my wife is my right hand, right? In as far as the business
is concerned, ’cause we’re both left-handed so she’s my right hand, for
sure. She definitely helps it. We follow the Traction kinda method, and in
there, they talk about rocket fuel, and you’ve got the visionary founder,
and then you’ve got the integrator. She is the typical integrator. So she is
the person that gets things done. I can hand stuff to her, and she’ll make
sure that they just get ’em done. So she’s really stepped up, taken over.

As I’ve started to step out of the martial arts world, she’s stepped up to
kind of fill some more management roles and to handle that as we bring a new
partner on and kinda push that business forward, too. So I get to sit back
and be more visionary, more just Grand Poobah. “Blessed thou, you are now
worthy. You can wear that belt,” type of thing.

Don Patrick: Did you learn that from Morris? Grand Poobah? That’s the first
I ever heard it from Morris.

Morgan Shank: Maybe. Probably. You’d be surprised.

Don Patrick: Well, from the first time I met you and the many meetings we’ve
had and encounters, your business acumen is amazing. You’ve been an avid
student of it. And as you mentioned, what you all are doing is the same
thing as the Brain Trust and helping, educating. And, so now you’re
transitioning into this world and, let me see if I got this correct, you
worked for free for a few years with Morris? Is that what I understand?

Morgan Shank: No, no. Not quite? Not quite. No, that’s not how that went.

Don Patrick: Okay.

Morris Shank: Well, it’s definitely not how that went.

Morgan Shank: That’s not how that went. I started three-plus years ago,
right? So in 2023 is kinda when I started, January 1st. Before that, Morris
had been after me for a while to kinda come in and kinda, you know, that I
could become a financial advisor. So I came in and job shadowed him in ’22,
and I said, “Hey, this is the same thing I do, just around a circle table
instead of a mat.”

So I started in ’23, kinda halftime, quarter, three-quarter time. I’m still
transitioning out of the martial arts school. But I immediately jumped into
CFP courses and a higher level at the University of Missouri, kinda getting
that degree portion of it, that certificate. They have a certificate in
certified financial planning, so started that right away. Was here at the
office, and then in ’24 came on more. In ’25, now I’m full-time, and did
that. Kinda in ’24 I made the transition to full-time.

Don Patrick: So prior to ’24, you were running your business and also over
at Morris

Morgan Shank: Yeah. You can kind of think of a declining scale with an
inclining scale. So as I was declining ATA, I was inclining here. Just
’cause I can only do 60 or 70 hours a week before my brain starts to shut
down, so. And now I’ve got it down to kind of a manageable where I’m here,
full time, and then I’m there about 10 hours a week or so. So really paired
that down quite a bit.

Still transitioning. A lot of those roles, a lot of those responsibilities
have come off and now I mainly speak into my people. So I’m still leading
them pretty hard. I’m still leading a bit in the organization as a whole,
the international organization, although I’ve stepped down on a lot of those
roles too. But yep, we’re making it all work. It’s fun. It’s enjoyable. It’s
a great thing to figure out how to make this transition.

It’s a cool perspective too, because here I am, I have this unique
perspective in that while I’m the incoming advisor here or the junior here,
but at the same time, on the ATA side, I’m the exiting person. So I have
this unique role where I get to see a lens on both sides and what that looks
like. So I think that’s kind of unique to what most successions kind of
might look like.

Don Patrick: It is. So what was the mentoring and training like for you?

Morgan Shank: Yeah. Well, that’s been something actually we’ve been
developing and it’s been excellent. Because I was doing the CFP courses,
now, you have to understand, when I walked in here in 2023, I didn’t know a
non-retirement account from a retirement account. I didn’t know much of
anything. So I really started from zero to get there.

So it was interesting to be able to take the book work, the stuff I was
doing on the weekends and at nights, and then bring it in and say, “Morris,
how does this actually work?” And then he’d be able to explain how that
actually works in the real world. Not to mention, I started sitting in
meetings all the time, and I was the fly on the wall for a long time. And
then I got good at the software, and I started to be able to help there. And
then I got good on all the other technical things, so now I can kind of help
push.

And at this point in time, Morris and I work as a team in, and I would say,
90% of the meetings. And so we’re working those cases, and whether it’s the
software or the planning, and we have a real reference. So it’s been fun to
watch as I step into it, and you get to see… the analogy we like to use is a
surgeon.

So when you start, you’re an intern, and then you’re a resident. And all you
do is you just stand there and watch the surgeon who’s doing it, because
you’ve seen it in the book and you’ve heard about it, but you don’t know why
he holds the tool exactly that way and this angle so he doesn’t nick this
artery, and you wouldn’t know that until you’ve seen so many of those
surgeries.

And then eventually you get to be the resident where you have the, you’re
now holding different things for hours on end. And then you go to the next
part where you’re actually doing some stuff, and the surgeon’s watching you
do it. So it’s very much that process that we’ve kind of had it. And a lot
of that knowledge you wouldn’t gain from a book, I’m gaining by sitting in
the meeting and hearing how he interacts with people, how he does different
meeting cues, how he’s got a process behind how he communicates at a high
level and how he works different planning concepts or struggles or
opportunities, how he finds that.

So it’s pretty awesome to have a master surgeon that I’m learning from.
Couldn’t ask for a better situation.

Morris Shank: Oh, go on, Morgan. Keep going.

Don Patrick: So Morgan, you shared with me and showed me, you said you were
a visual, and ’cause a lot of it was just verbal teaching and talking, and
you created an incredible training plan visually, and in really great detail
in level one, two, three, four. I forget what you named them, but it was
amazing. But you created it.

Morgan Shank: Well, we did together, I would say. I shouldn’t take full
credit.

Morris Shank: Thank you, Morgan. It’s time for a little credit. Thank you so
much.

Morgan Shank: One of the things that I did when I first stepped in, so I’m a
martial arts, structure, discipline type of guy. So when I came in, I said,
“Hey, we need to have a little structure behind this.” And my uncle,
Morris’s brother, actually recommended that we start a communication style
cycle where we’d say, “Hey, here’s what we’re gonna do in the next three
months. Here’s what we’re gonna do in the next three months.” And then we’d
revisit it to kinda ebb and flow, ’cause as structured a plan as you want,
it needs to be able to adjust.

And so we started that rhythm from day one, and it provided us a little bit
of structure. And then about a year into it, we started naming things, and
because I was in school, it made sense to have a 101, 201, 301, 401
structure. And then we got more detailed with it in that we’d walk out of a
meeting and I’d go, “Was that a—” He’d go, “That was an 801,” or, “That was
a 201,” or, “That was a 301.”

So then we just, all we did is we put that down on a mind map that allowed
us to codify where some of this stuff was happening. And we codified, “Well,
here’s the bookwork that you’re doing or the technical knowledge that you’re
getting from the sort of courses, and then here’s all the other stuff that
you’re actually learning how to do. How to deal with the back office, how to
deal with client meetings, how to actually get some of these services done
for people.”

And that really helped us just codify where we were and it helped me
structuralize the actual plan moving forward. And by doing that, it kept the
open line of communication, which I think is something that’s been very
great as far as our succession and how we’re doing this plan moving forward,
is we’re really good about communicating with each other. Not just the good,
but the bad, the ugly. Personally, we connect really well together. And so
having a little structure behind that allowed us to say, “Where does this
go?” And we can look back six months later and say, “Look at all the stuff
we’ve done. Wow, we have learned a lot. We’re not just stagnant,” or,
“Here’s where we’re going next. Here’s the holes that we need to go fill.”
So it allowed us to create a look back and a forward type of plan that’s a
little more structured into where we’re going.

Morris Shank: Well, the overriding thing on that is just to have a mutual
best interest philosophy and commitment to making it work, and that includes
making it work for the people we serve.

Don Patrick: So you both are entrepreneurs, business background. Morgan,
you’re a great business guy. You’re brand new to the financial planning
world. Any business acumen you were able to add to Morris’s firm?

Morgan Shank: Oh, yeah, right away. Well, my team’s quite a bit bigger at
ATA, so I was able to come in and step in operationally and do some things.
So, payroll, no problem. Oh, wait, set up the accounting system, because at
the time he was still filing as a kind of a Schedule C.

Don Patrick: Oh, a proprietor

Morgan Shank: And so we moved, yeah, so we moved everything to an—he had an
LLC, but we moved everything actual to its own business books, right? So I
was able to function all of that, have the experience to be able to do that.
HR experience, I’ve got the experience to, “Hey, how do you deal with the
state and getting the tax forms and all?” All that I’ve got able to do. Oh,
wait, we had some of the lease things, and what’s a lease look like when
they want to get, you know, at the end of the year, when they wanna come get
their costs up and down.

Don Patrick: Mm-hmm.

Morgan Shank: So a lot of that general business stuff I had. What I didn’t
have was the financial world. So all of the jargon, the A to Z of all the
different IRA, all those things that, whatever, you know, statement things

Don Patrick: It’s a foreign language

Morgan Shank: That’s it. All the jargons.

Don Patrick: Acronyms like crazy.

Morgan Shank: Oh, that’s it. Acronyms. There’s an acronym for everything. So
that is what I really had to learn, but I stepped in, kinda initially was
able to take off some big rocks. I think that entrepreneurial mindset,
though, also plays through in that when I didn’t understand something, I
figured it out.

That’s one of the big things that I think we’re talking about today, is just
how that small business mindset extends to this entrepreneurial thing. And
entrepreneurs have a different type of thing to them, right? They have a
different drive, a different animal behind them. They understand what they
need to go do. They don’t mind getting their hands dirty. I’ve cleaned
plenty of toilets and plenty of stuff over the course of the years because
that’s what you have to do to get it done.

Don Patrick: That’s correct. What’s the long-range plan with you? So you say
junior, I say G2, generation two. Is this a succession plan we’re working
on?

Morgan Shank: Eventually.

Don Patrick: Eventually.

Morgan Shank: But I’m in no hurry to get Morris out the door. We have too
much fun together. So, as long as he’ll continue with it. He read a great
book about the Mayo Clinic, and those doctors and surgeons get to stay as
long as they want—

Morris Shank: I read that.

Morgan Shank: As long as they’re still competent.

Don Patrick: Yep.

Morgan Shank: And we kinda have that basis behind it. We don’t wanna have a
timeline. We wanna be able to ebb and flow. Hopefully, we can grow the
business, continue. Hopefully, Morris can enjoy life how he wants to on his
own timeline. So we’re definitely not ironing things out, but eventually
we’ll get to there.

Morris Shank: We are messaging people—and we had to get better at this—that
we have to have a succession plan and we have to have a transition plan.
It’s not a handoff, but it’s a necessary structure. With that said, we are
actively engaged in a formal both succession and transition plan.

Don Patrick: That’s right, you hired a consulting firm, correct?

Morris Shank: We did, called Elevate, and they’re doing a great job.

Don Patrick: Fantastic.

Morgan Shank: They’ve been excellent, not just about the mechanics of how a
transition has to work, ’cause that’s, you know, we all have those, we’re
financial planners, so numbers immediately flow through our head. “How does
this work? How does all that happen?” But just as much as financial planning
is the numbers, it’s also the behaviors. So they spend just as much time on
our behaviors and setting us up for the emotional psychology part behind it
to allow the transition to work correctly in the way that we’re looking for.

Morris Shank: Sometimes those meetings, because you’re getting, it’s one
thing to talk about something, it’s another thing to put it on paper and
think through it. And there are times after those meetings, and I’m kind of
done.

Don Patrick: They’re intense.

Morgan Shank: He’s spent for the day. It just brings reality into your face,
which I’m sure a lot of our clients kind of feel like, “Oh.”

Morris Shank: It’s a great example of facing things that they’re facing.
Totally. And it’s very helpful.

Don Patrick: That’s great advice. So Morris, you are really a high-end
financial planner, hands-on, and you call it microservice. Kind of walk us
through this experience, ’cause it’s an experience. It’s pretty amazing.

Morris Shank: Well, it goes back to what you asked me about the kind of
evolution of serving people or growing the business, and I would make all
these notes, and then look back on all the things that the client talked
about, and it just looked like a lot of things I wasn’t getting done or
helping them get done. And that was all part of not the checklist kind of
things. Those were, obviously those were all getting done. And just reading
about, I think they called it holistic planning was the original thought.
But so we serve about 150 households, and this hyper-focus is what we call
the microservice delivery business. So we execute over 250 well-documented
workflows, both routine and non-routine action items. And we think it’s the
right approach for families we serve and good for business. But be careful
what you wish for. I’ll give you an example: required minimum distributions.
Pretty simple, huh?

Don Patrick: Not really.

Morris Shank: Not really. Well, do you want it in a lump sum? Do you want it
monthly? Do you want it periodic? Do you want to withhold taxes or not? Do
you want to do qualified charitable distributions? Do you want to decide
what those distributions are early or you want to decide later? Do you wanna
look at it in the fourth quarter and maybe do your entire four voucher
payments with an additional amount of money coming out from the IRA ’cause
you don’t need all the RMDs?

That’s an example of one service that turned into microservices. And as I
like to say, it makes a lot of babies. So if you’re looking for ways to
serve those kind of things, another easy example would be benefits every
year, open enrollment. We all have probably gotten calls from clients a day
or two before open enrollment closes, and they’re saying, “Oh, I got my open
enrollment. What should I do?”

Don Patrick: Exactly.

Morris Shank: And just like when January 2nd gets here, you really can’t do
any tax planning for the year before. And so I started ticking in our
workflow two weeks before the open enrollment came out to send people a note
and say, “Make sure you let me know when the open enrollment is up so we
have two weeks to kinda decide.”

Well, that backs up into maybe somebody should not have their group
insurance anymore, their group life insurance, because they’re 50 or 55 and
they’re hitting these higher premiums. But that backs into, well, you can’t
apply for insurance two weeks during the open enrollment. You gotta have a
plan before that.

So all the microservices is those types of things elevated for all the
non-routine things and be able to follow up on it. And the last thing I’d
say about that, but be careful what you wish for ’cause it adds a lot of
complexity. But I also will say when you get these responses, “Oh, thank you
for calling me in advance for my open enrollment because blah, blah, blah,
blah, blah,” and all those kind of contacts are a constant source of
discovery opportunities, which is great for relationships and all the things
that we do.

Don Patrick: 250 workflows. That’s mind-boggling. So part of the key to this
is you’re very proactive. You’re not waiting for the clients to reach out.
You’re way ahead of them. They haven’t even thought about it yet, yet you’re
reaching out.

Morris Shank: Number one is we’re constantly probing for things that have
nothing to do with the routine. Like, when people first come in, whether
they’re prospects or clients, most commonly, particularly prospects, they
want to steer the conversation to their investments and, like I said, all
these obvious check marks. And that’s fine, and we just keep a little note.
But if you probe for people on a deeper level, if you probe on a deeper
level, there better be a reason you’re probing, not just to make
conversation, that you really do mean it. And then if you surprise them by
taking the opportunity to help them, then it makes them more inclined to
give you more information.

Don Patrick: Yeah.

Morris Shank: And they’re more comfortable with that. And so we just, what
we don’t want to do is have those things that are obvious needs that are
outside of the routine checklist to not at least be served. And you do have
to get permission. So if, go back to the required minimum distribution and
all those babies, is you have to get permission for them to want to do this
because it’s a lot of extra steps.

Don Patrick: It is.

Morris Shank: Once you do it and they see the value in the extra steps,
they’re fine, and they’ll often start talking about it. But it’s a lot.

Don Patrick: It’s amazing. And I assume most of your new clients come from
client referrals?

Morris Shank: Yes.

Don Patrick: Yeah.

Morris Shank: Or a few centers of influence, and then relationships, even.

Don Patrick: So most people don’t even know what a financial planner is, and
they think you’re a stock jock or something like that, right, when they
first come in. And then you start doing this deep probing, and you’re
demonstrating what this really is, and the money management’s just a portion
of it.

Morris Shank: I think that’s a great example is the way to steer away from
the money management or the eye candy of our industry. And make no mistake
about it, it’s an industry that runs on assets under management and
gathering assets. And it’s okay to state that to people. But if you can just
sort of set that aside—and I know that plenty of people in our group do
this—and get their involvement and permission in that, then they tend to be
willing and interested and able to play along.

Morgan Shank: So here’s how this works in real life. The client comes in,
and they hand Morris the statements, ’cause this is what they have. They
have all the stuff, and they hand them across the table the first time they
come in. And remember, this is my perspective, the guy who’s sitting in the
corner, the fly on the wall, trying to learn all this stuff. And here’s
what’s happens. He gets those statements, and he takes them with two hands
and very carefully, like, “Ooh, you’re giving me the things.” And ’cause
that’s what they feel like.

Oh, and he has those things in his hands, and he takes them with two hands,
and then he moves to the side and he sets them down on the table and he
says, “Those are later. First, tell me about you and what’s on your mind.”
And that step right there is something you don’t see in a book or see
anywhere else. That step right there does what? It does what he’s just
talking about. It shows that, yeah, those are important, but that’s
secondary to who you are and what your plan’s gonna be, who you are, what
you feel like. You are more important than those statements right now. We’re
gonna get to those, but understanding you before I even look at those makes
a big difference. And that’s the little things that you, that’s the surgeon
holding the tool the exact specific way to understand that you wouldn’t know
until you’ve seen that and go, “Oh, that’s the reason why.”

Don Patrick: I love that, and it’s visual.

Morris Shank: The message is also that those assets are really important,
but they’re the resources that are gonna drive your plan.

Don Patrick: Mm-hmm.

Morris Shank: And then when the time’s right, we’ll hyper-focus on that.

Don Patrick: So in terms of assets under management, do you charge separate
fees for financial planning? Is it all incorporated in assets under
management? How do you charge?

Morris Shank: For the most part, somebody new, we’ll charge a flat fee for
the planning services to get started. And the reason behind that is to honor
that philosophy that we’re gonna set these assets over here and not
hyper-focus or obligate you to do something with this to get good advice.
Then along the way, if you find an interest in moving forward and/or you’re
already paying somebody to help you move forward, we’ll discuss that. Now,
there are cases where they are already paying somebody, and they’re not
getting good advice, and it’s obvious that they want help.

I’ll basically say, “I’m not trying to double-dip here. I’m not trying to
obligate you. But if you are wanting to move forward, we’ll continue in this
planning process.” And I’ll mention that we have a flat fee approach as
well. And as we get into it a little more, if you’re uncomfortable moving
forward like you are with your existing advisor, then great, we’ll charge a
fee. And if not, then we wouldn’t need to do that. And that’s an art and a
science conversation. And I’ve been skunked a couple times.

Don Patrick: Mm-hmm.

Morris Shank: But I don’t let the people who are disingenuous rule the roost
for those that are not disingenuous.

Don Patrick: And what’s the fee range for your flat fee planning fee?

Morris Shank: The way I state it is if it’s, let’s say it’s $2,500 to
$5,000.

Don Patrick: Okay. And you’re not gonna—

Morris Shank: $2,500 if it’s pretty simple, and maybe they’re an
accumulator, and it’s about organization and not a lot of active involvement
beyond giving them their to-do list. And then $5,000 if it’s complex. And
I’ll always bill half of that up front and the other half soon enough to
either wrap up the plan or they’ve decided to make a decision going forward.

Don Patrick: Okay. So you have a referral, a new prospect. What does that
whole—how does that all work? I mean, how does the client introduce you to
the prospective client? How do you communicate with them? What’s the meeting
structure like? And just kind of walk us through what that’s like.

Morris Shank: We’re not the volume business.

Don Patrick: Mm-hmm.

Morris Shank: So it’s pretty, I’d say it’s pretty informal, but it’s a first
phone call or a meeting, which is discovery. And I’m oftentimes more
inclined just to have a phone call that we get into the high level and I’m
making a decision on how serious they are and what the next steps might be.
And so I pretty much would like to have their phone numbers to make phone
contact with them.

There are cases where people are ready to come in and we just go ahead and
schedule a meeting. And I just try to make it really clear how more of this
first meeting’s gonna be about discovery than diving into a lot of details.
And my point in that first meeting, and Morgan, you can comment on this, is
us to—we’re basically interviewing each other. That’s what I say to people.
And I’m just looking for this genuine commitment on their part if there’s a
need and a desire on both of us for them to move forward and do the steps
and make the commitment that they need to make. What would you say, Morgan?

Morgan Shank: I would say we, so one of our, we had a client tell us this
the other day, right? And this goes with the microservice, and it goes with
everything. We are bound and determined to be helpful, and we’re gonna be
helpful. One of the things that we always say to everybody when they come in
is, “It’s gonna be a valuable use of your time.” Whether you choose us or
you don’t choose us, we work together, whether we choose you or not, it’s
gonna be a valuable use of your time. So even in that first meeting, that’s
important to us.

And so what happens when they come in is we’re asking the questions, what’s
on top of mind for them? That’s the first question, the most important
question that we see all the time. And then it’s about walking them through
what our process will look like, ’cause they’re expecting something in their
head, and we’re gonna be different. And giving them the space and the
opportunity to open up like that is part of the magic that happens that
they’re not used to.

And so getting them to frame that, “No, we’re not gonna come in and sell you
this meeting. That’s not what this is about. This is about understanding you
and understanding what that is.” Then later we’re gonna dive into some
things. If they have a specific question, yeah, we’re gonna answer it right
away. But that’s really what it’s about, and then it’s about finding that
right match.

Since we’re bound and determined to be helpful, you need to be bound and
determined to accept the help and do the things we ask you to do. And as
long as you do that, we’re bought in. We are in. We will help and help till
the cows come home. Where we don’t mesh with someone is when we get someone
that you can tell doesn’t wanna do things. It’s okay for us to help prod
them along a little bit. It’s not okay to have somebody that’s
disinterested.

Morris Shank: Well, if they’re not committed.

Morgan Shank: Yes.

Don Patrick: Absolutely.

Morris Shank: To seeing it through. Stating the obvious. But it goes, we are
doing this to demonstrate that we can be helpful for their situation. And
it’s not uncommon for somebody to have something that’s top of mind, and we
just take care of that, and everything else goes on the back burner till
that’s done. That’s pretty, that happens fairly frequently.

Don Patrick: So this introductory meeting is also, sounds like a pretty deep
dive discovery meeting.

Morgan Shank: You’d be surprised when you ask that question how deep people
go. Quickly, how fast, if you just ask the questions correctly. We’re big
believers in asking questions, right? And when you ask the right question,
you’d be surprised how far they can go. When you just mirror some of that
stuff back to them, you’d be surprised how deep they’ll go, how fast they’ll
do that.

Morris Shank: Well, tied into that is the less we talk, the better the
meeting goes.

Don Patrick: Two ears, one mouth.

Morris Shank: Yep.

Don Patrick: So, all right, so we’ve had this introductory slash deep dive
meeting. What’s the next step or meeting?

Morris Shank: Then it’s the usual data input, financial software, possibly a
list of plan, depending on their situation, and what we call their top three
priorities. So usually when people come in, there’s things on their mind,
and it’s usually up to about 10. They’ll just rattle off. Great, rattle,
rattle, rattle.

And then part of this comprehensive planning is we need to know the top
three things on that list because there are studies that if you have one
thing to get done and it’s a priority, you’ll get it done. And if you have
up to three things to do, you’ll probably get that done. And if you get more
than that, five or 10, it all gets pretty muddled.

So our job is to always be focusing up on what their next one up is. And
what might happen is we’ve identified the top three, we knock out the first
one, maybe we knock out the second one, but by the time the third one comes
along, maybe something else happens, or because of what we’ve done, that one
kinda goes away and something else tees up. So we’re constantly trying to
just keep these top one or two or three things because the people we work
with and work for are really busy, and we’re all really busy. And my main
thing is making sure that we don’t waste their time. Every time we have a
conversation or interacting, interaction, it was a good use of their time,
and we look back over these rolling periods of time, and we’re always
knocking something out. And it’s always an integration of traditional
financial planning, traditional investment management, and then all these,
what we’d like to say, unique personal things that kinda round it all out.

Don Patrick: So the data gets inputted. The next meeting, you’re looking for
the top three. Are you showing them what the planning looks like, that sort
of thing as well, or just focusing on top three?

Morris Shank: We would integrate those things with the typical output of the
financial planning software, if that’s what you’re asking. Timelines for
retirement, if there are other needs related to cash flow that we’re solving
for, whether that is near-term needs of buying a house or changing jobs or
kids’ funding or insurance, and that is all integrated in the next follow-up
meeting. And we would also be looking at their asset allocation of all their
assets, the location of all their assets. Sometimes it takes a little while
to get all the statements.

Don Patrick: Mm-hmm.

Morris Shank: Especially the outside accounts. That’s a big challenge
always. And so we don’t have to have all the information. I know that
differs from some of my peers. I don’t have to have all the information all
the time, but we have to be committed on both sides to eventually getting
all the information. And I think that giving them the liberty to do things
as they go along and work with what they have helps them kind of move down
the river, I think, a little faster.

Don Patrick: So it’s not a very rigid approach based on your approach. It’s
very customized to the client and the priorities and the top three.

Morris Shank: How would you comment on that, Morgan?

Morgan Shank: I would say everything we do is pretty—I used the word the
other day—bespoke.

Don Patrick: Oh, that’s a big word.

Morgan Shank: Everything that we do from the meetings to even the models or
the training that we have people in is very customized and very bespoke on a
personalized basis. Each person’s an individual, and yeah, we can do some
things the same, but a lot of it is very individualized, which means we have
to be flexible and we have to be able to move things, and that’s why there’s
not 10 workflows, there’s 250, ’cause each one’s got a little different
thing to it that needs to happen.

Morris Shank: It’s not chaotic, it’s just the customization comes in the
non-financial planning routine things. That’s where it comes in. The routine
financial planning things are all done with a good structure to them. It’s
just the timing of what you focus on when.

Don Patrick: So as an existing client, what does the cadence look like
throughout the year? The meetings, phone calls, working on the top three.
What’s that like?

Morris Shank: Go ahead, Morgan. I’m interested.

Morgan Shank: So here’s the cadence. The cadence is, again, personalized. So
yes, we do the annual, at least annual meeting, right? And a lot of people
are on that cadence. But what we’ve found is about a third of our clients
have something happen every year that requires more than one meeting.
There’s something that happened. Maybe there was a death. Maybe there’s
long-term care planning. Maybe they’ve changed jobs. Maybe they’re getting
retired. Man, when somebody retires, there’s about six or eight meetings
that have to happen in order to get them set up for all these little things
that are gonna happen.

And so the meeting cadence is, again, completely personalized, completely
bespoke again. Hey, they need to meet more often. This client, and we’ve all
had those clients too. Some of them can go like, just over and over, and you
can go for two hours, and they can comprehend everything. And other ones,
it’s better to break into small, little, itty-bitty chunks for them to be
able to comprehend what’s happening. They need to do little things at a
time. So it’s very much a meeting cycle that’s very customized to them.

Our goal and our aim is to be available for them, so when they call, and
you’re on the phone with them for half an hour because they have a question
about something, is that a meeting? I don’t know, maybe, maybe not, right?
But we wanna be available for them. So we try to be very available when they
call. Morris loves to pick up the phone, so it’s, you’re never going through
a receptionist to get through Morris. You can call him, and he, if he’s
sitting there, he’ll pick the phone up before any of us can. He’s the
fastest draw. He’s like in the Wild, Wild, West: zoom, boom. He’s picking
that phone up fast because he loves to talk to people. And so, does that
count as a meeting?

Yes, we have the annual review. But in between that, it’s the cadence which
they wanna be able to do. We do, we’ve switched to an annual cadence for a
lot of times now. I would say, almost half of our clients are on a sometime
during-the-year review and then a fourth-quarter review. We did a ton of
fourth-quarter reviews because of the tax planning. We’ve got pretty
systemized as far as that’s concerned, but I want to say we probably had 50
meetings that were specifically just tax planning for the fourth quarter
that are extra additional things.

Again, that microservice thing is not we just did one meeting and did some
tax planning then. It’s no, we did that and then we’re coming back to it
again in the fourth quarter ’cause we know a lot more information now. We
know what the capital gains are gonna be like. We know what, oh, wait, there
was a whole big change in the tax law last year that completely changed all
of your tax planning. So I’d love to say, “Here’s the schedule. Here’s what
we’re doing. We’re doing the surge meeting deals, and we have to get
everybody in here, and here’s the time that we do that.” No, we’re just open
for when people want to be available and ready.

Morris Shank: There’s a downside to that, of course. It’s efficient, it’s
effective, but not always that efficient. So we’re working on that a little
bit.

Don Patrick: But it’s extremely high touch.

Morris Shank: It is, and it is. I don’t know how else to say it.

Morgan Shank: And we like it that way. We like people. In our succession
planning things, the thing that Morris has said he doesn’t want to stop
doing is meeting with people. That’s what he likes doing the most. He
doesn’t, all the other stuff, somebody else, he wouldn’t mind if I did it
all. But if he had to skip a meeting, he’d hate it. That’s what he loves to
do, is meet with people and talk to people and do that.

Morris Shank: Well, one caveat on some of this, you don’t always have to
have a 30-minute meeting or 45-minute meeting. There are things that I’ll
schedule an appointment for and we can knock something out on a microservice
that’s 15 minutes. But if you do it directly with a direct contact and you
get to, and you get to it, and my people seem to be the kind of people that
like to get stuff done and like to get to the point, and you can knock a lot
of stuff out without making a big deal out of it.

Don Patrick: Well, that’s why they work with you, Morris. You’re a get-to-it
guy. “Hey.”

Morris Shank: I know. Let’s go.

Don Patrick: Oh, okay. Bye. Done.

Morris Shank: By the way, last night I was talking to Mary, my wife, and I
go, “Mary, ever since I’ve been getting this feedback about my phone
etiquette, I’ve been tracking how long somebody will take to say goodbye if
you allow them. How many goodbyes does it take?” It’s kind of amazing.
“Goodbye.” “Yeah, goodbye.” “Have a good day.” “You too.” “You too.” “Yep.
Okay, see you later”

Don Patrick: Everybody knows you, Morris. It is so funny. You’re in the
middle of something—

Morris Shank: I know.

Don Patrick: “Okay, gotta go.” I mean, you called me the other day, it was
tragic news, and it hit me hard and I was just, “I gotta go.” I go, “Okay,
see ya.”

Morris Shank: And then what did I text you?

Don Patrick: Oh, I know. I’m just, I’m teasing, but I’m not teasing. It’s
funny, everybody—

Morris Shank: I know, it’s like I got this complex about it. Like, okay.
Well, that’s what your office said one time. I was there at the retreat
early helping, and everybody invited me out for dinner. This group, six or
eight, 10 people from the IFG, and the subject of my phone etiquette came
up, and it was a long, skinny table, and I’m on the very end. And as soon as
the subject of my phone etiquette came up, everybody just starts looking and
listening, and I go, “Wow.” And Laura does a great impression.

Don Patrick: Does she?

Morris Shank: I’m sure she does. And then finally I said, “Oh. Oh, gosh, I
guess I gotta fix that.” “Oh, no. Oh, no, gosh, no. No, we like that about
you.” I go, “I’m so confused.” It actually goes back to Victor Kiam. Ever
heard of him, Don?

Don Patrick: No.

Morris Shank: He bought the company. He bought the Patriots, the razor
company.

Don Patrick: Oh, yeah.

Morris Shank: He liked the company so much he bought the razor. So anyway,
or he liked the razor so much he bought the company. And I used to read all
those books, Mary Kay Cosmetics, Victor Kiam, the guy that started IBM, and
that’s still my sorta fuel for learning is all these people have done these
things before. And they grilled into me, people like that grilled into me
that you don’t waste people’s time on the phone. Get to it.

Don Patrick: Yeah.

Morris Shank: So I guess I’ve gone too far.

Don Patrick: No, I agree. So speaking of, so St. Louis is a large city,
however, my experience, traffic is pretty easy to get around. Do your
clients have preferences: in-person, phone call, Zoom? What is that mix
like?

Morris Shank: They’re more inclined to meet in person because it is not
hard. I like to say St. Louis doesn’t have a traffic problem, but therefore
they also have a commerce problem, ’cause they’re just not that busy. I’d be
accommodating to a Zoom call. I’m not the kind of person that thinks
non-meetings are the way to go, that virtual is the solution to everything.
And even people out of town, I have a pledge to at least see them, not every
year, probably every other year at least. But if somebody wants to do and
skip a face-to-face meeting if they’re in town for a year, I’m fine with
that, but I’d pretty much require it face to face the next, within the next
year.

Don Patrick: Yeah. And your office is beautiful. I mean, it’s a treat just
to go into your office.

Morris Shank: It doesn’t hurt.

Don Patrick: Doesn’t hurt at all.

Morris Shank: And it’s a good location.

Don Patrick: It’s fantastic.

Morris Shank: And we make it fun. And going back to these meetings, if you
can surprise people with the length of a meeting and the agenda of the
meeting and keep it fun and engaging and not have it be any longer than it
needs to be, and at the end if people wanna elaborate or extend it for
whatever reason, that’s up to them. It’s just, and then the other thing is,
I’ll never schedule a back-to-back meeting without a buffer, because if it
gets into something heavy, I don’t want feeling like, people feeling like
they’re at the doctor’s office and their time’s up.

Don Patrick: I like that.

Morris Shank: Yep.

Don Patrick: So this is a quick aside. The consortium member, this is, it’s
lifelong learning, trying to be the best, trying to get better constantly.
So Morris, how many conferences do you attend per year, roughly?

Morris Shank: Five.

Don Patrick: That’s amazing.

Morgan Shank: Outside of the IFG conference.

Don Patrick: Yeah.

Morris Shank: Or LPL. I don’t consider LPL

Don Patrick: Yeah.

Morris Shank: That kind of conference. I’m not being critical of it.

Don Patrick: So you go T3, Veres, Morningstar. What’s the leadership one,
Chicago?

Morris Shank: Global Leadership.

Don Patrick: Global Leadership.

Morris Shank: And I look at Kitces’ list every year and I signed up for two
new ones. One’s called Horizons. I don’t know what the content is. I don’t
care. It’s in Orlando, which is a 45-minute trip from where I lived in
Florida, and some of my friends are there, so great. That’s a tax-deductible
vacation.

And then there’s another one that is in the fall, and they’ve got
outsourcing accounting services as part of this meeting content, which I’m
very interested in. There’s a big void in people getting accounting
services. It’s really difficult and getting harder. And I just, I gotta
figure that out. There’s a way to outsource this. I don’t think it, you have
to be, first of all, it costs $600. It’s not unusual now. $600 for an
individual tax return to get completed. Could cost as much as $600 in an
accounting firm. Even H&R Block, that really just fill in blanks,
charges $200 to $300. And it’s not the cost as much as it is they’re not
getting any bang for your, their buck other than just getting your taxes
done.

Don Patrick: Well, I think—

Morris Shank: So, I’m interested in that.

Don Patrick: Yeah. I mean, historically, accountants are historians. They
don’t do the tax planning. And by the way, Holistiplan, you and Josh
introduced Holistiplan three, four years ago at the retreat. I would bet 80%
are all using Holistiplan now. It was such a game-changer.

Morris Shank: That’s what I hear.

Don Patrick: Yeah. Well, thank you.

Morris Shank: Makes me weep.

Don Patrick: So let’s talk a little about your tech stack, all the
technology that you’re using in the firm.

Morris Shank: Sure. Well, I was, I guess an early adopter in work in CRM,
Juncture, 2000s, in 2000.

Don Patrick: Is this still around, by the way?

Morris Shank: It’s called Advisor Engine. It got bought by—

Don Patrick: Oh, that’s right. I remember that. Yes.

Morris Shank: CRM. Yeah. It actually got bought by Franklin Templeton.

Don Patrick: Right.

Morris Shank: Yeah, of all people.

Don Patrick: Yep, which is strange.

Morris Shank: It is kind of strange. And I’d read about that software
through my years of reading Bob Veres’ newsletter, and I’ve made a lot of, a
fair amount of decisions through reading his newsletter. We transitioned to
RightCapital last year, I think officially. Does that sound right, Morgan?

Morgan Shank: Over the last two years.

Don Patrick: From what?

Morgan Shank: MoneyGuidePro, well, eMoney, MoneyGuidePro, and now we’re
stuck in RightCapital.

Morris Shank: So I was at, I’ve been MoneyGuide, eMoney, and what I didn’t
like about eMoney was it was on the LPL ecosystem. Back to MoneyGuide, back
to Right—and then we went over to RightCapital.

Don Patrick: So can I ask two questions real quick?

Morris Shank: Yep. Yep.

Don Patrick: So MoneyGuide is goals-based and RightCapital is cash flow
based, correct? Was that part of the reasoning or just a—

Morris Shank: No.

Don Patrick: How’s their tax planning compare to Holistiplan?

Morris Shank: My view on financial planning programs and tax planning is
it’s okay, but it’s the difference between you wanna be a meaningful
specific or a wandering generality, and you just can’t do tax planning
generally speaking. It just doesn’t work, and you have to narrow tax
planning to a one to two-year time horizon from where you are right now, and
where you are right now changes every year, and the software programs can’t
do that. They’re getting a lot better. I just wouldn’t rely on them for
that.

Don Patrick: Okay. Good.

Morris Shank: Holistiplan, MindMap, and MindMap is more of our internal
organizational tool, although recently I used it for an investment
management presentation for somebody, and Morgan was kind of thrilled with
how it turned out.

Don Patrick: I love MindMap.

Morris Shank: Yeah. He said, “Oh, well, now, since you did it that way, now
I understand a lot more.” I’ve been a fan of RISA. It’s Wade Pfau’s process
of how somebody should pick their, whether they should take a cash balance
pension or take the pension, whether they should do rider annuities, whether
they’re fine with total return. And to me, it really does describe to people
themselves about what their risk profile is for making these kinds of
decisions, not necessarily should they be 60/40, 70/30, or things like that.
A conservative person might have all their mortgage paid off. They might
never have debt. They might have a great emergency fund, but they shouldn’t
test conservative and have a conservative retirement 401(k) necessarily. To
me, that doesn’t make any sense. And then we’ve recently started using
wealth.com, and the recent experience on that, Morgan, you just said to me
last Friday, what did you say? Or Thursday.

Morgan Shank: We’re gonna get our money’s worth just from simple things,
right? Not high level, but just people doing simple plans inside of it.
We’re gonna get our money’s worth. Plus, it’s helping us identify some cases
where we’ve got some people that are maybe—they’re becoming deceased, and
then how does the trust work after that? It gets complicated, and how do we
handle the accounts after that? And so it’ll help us break out what the
trust actually says, so.

Don Patrick: And it’s visual. It’s almost like a mind mapper.

Morris Shank: It is. And the estate planning follow-up for basic estate
plans is really hard for people to get to the table.

Don Patrick: Mm-hmm.

Morris Shank: And attorneys are so busy. Nobody’s going into estate planning
out of law school. Nobody’s going into accounting out of business school.
And so we’re just trying to figure out ways to move people along. Currently,
we are in discovery with WaterLily.

Don Patrick: We’re gonna get an introduction set up for the whole
consortium.

Morris Shank: My main thing on that is evaluating these rate increases on
existing policies. That was my goal. And then there’s a software called
Libretto, which is really high-end for how much is enough. Let me just call
it that way, and I’m just playing around with that one. And I’m really
interested in how an AI workflow agent could help us tie some of, all these
things together.

And a perfect example of that is we do the tax letter through Holistiplan,
but it’s a monumental project in January to figure out everything that ought
to be on that tax letter, comparing it to years before. Maybe we closed an
account, maybe we opened an account, backdoor Roths, RMDs, QCDs. And it
seems like—and this is something we could just do internally—that maybe if
we had some kind of agent that could read our notes and at least simplify
that project.

We tested Income Lab, but it really didn’t fill in any gaps. I bounced this
off of my study group about how do people manage the RMDs, and it really
seems like Excel is still the only solution for managing these kind of
workflows with all these multiple layers, integrations, and nuances. It just
makes way too many babies for a program.

Don Patrick: Impressive. MyRepChat?

Morgan Shank: Yes. Jump.

Don Patrick: Jump.

Morgan Shank: Yes.

Don Patrick: Scheduling?

Morgan Shank: What’s up?

Morris Shank: Okay, here’s an old dog, new trick. So I was resistant of
people scheduling on their own or pushing that off to them.

Don Patrick: Scary. You’re giving up control of your calendar it seems like.

Morris Shank: Part two was that. But part one is I didn’t want them to feel
like—I didn’t wanna take the personal out of it. But selfishly for me, it
made it easier for them to knock out their schedule. Back to: people are so
dadgum busy.

Don Patrick: Mm-hmm.

Morris Shank: Our job is to make it easy, and it made it easy. So then we
had to put some buffers in the calendar and all that.

Morgan Shank: So additional comments. So the reason we switched to
RightCapital is the ease at which it communicates the financial plan to the
client. So it’s very easy to communicate, “Hey, here’s what’s going on.
Here’s the different tiles.” So from a look and a perspective and visually,
it’s very easy to communicate what’s going on in the plan to the client.
They get it. They’re not inundated with all this data and all these charts
and all this stuff, so we can very much get to it. When we wanna dive deep
for that person, that engineer that has to know everything, we can do that,
but it’s really great at communicating that.

WaterLily is exciting because it takes the mystery out of long-term care
planning, not just long-term care insurance, but actual long-term care
planning. So it’s got a module in it that allows us to say, even if someone
is self-funding—and we know there’s people that are gonna self-fund—it
allows us to say, “How are we gonna self-fund? What should we anticipate the
self-funding to look like?” So it’s pretty exceptional inside of that.

Morris Shank: Well, I’ll comment that I think the same thing with tax
planning inside financial planning programs. I don’t think long-term care
planning is done well inside of a retirement MoneyGuide. In fact, the lady
that I’ve been working with forever, Sue Chesney, who you know, Don.

Don Patrick: Yep.

Morris Shank: Who’s an expert in all these hardwares and has 15 people that
do nothing but work for other financial advisors, she agrees with that.
Putting the long-term care in the planning software is kinda hard, where
this pulls it out and it hyper-focuses on a topic that nobody likes to talk
about. And it puts it in tangible form. So we’ll see. It’s worked well so
far on the cases where we’ve shown people their input and the software’s
output. The downside is—and I had a lady reject it because it does ask a lot
of personal questions that she didn’t wanna answer.

Don Patrick: Yeah, it does, but it needs to.

Morris Shank: It goes with making the plan.

Don Patrick: It’s super impressive, and it’s not very expensive. And then
the AI generation portion of it and then the rank sorting, if it’s
determined there needs to be some long-term insurance, it rank sorts all the
companies. They got all the data.

Morris Shank: It does.

Don Patrick: And they have all the cost base for all, every state, every
locale. It’s amazing.

Morris Shank: And they make statements like, “The policies that we’re
showing from these companies aren’t the ones most recommended by insurance
agents,” because insurance agents tend to do things that they’re used to.

Don Patrick: Mm-hmm.

Morris Shank: Or it’s not integrating enough with what the client’s
preferences are, and I’m not being critical of all that. But these are a
couple people that did things like graduate from high school in 2012 and MIT
in 2016. They’re on the cutting edge of technology in San Francisco that are
doing this. By the way, we went out to dinner with the founder and her
fiancé, Bryce, Morgan and I, at the T3 conference.

Don Patrick: Oh, that’s great.

Morris Shank: And she and her fiancé were in Israel four hours before the
bombs went off.

Don Patrick: Oh my gosh. All right.

Morris Shank: And there was—

Morgan Shank: A story.

Morris Shank: For a wedding, and their story about getting out of there was
crazy.

Don Patrick: Oh my gosh.

Morris Shank: I know. Going from bomb shelter to bomb shelter across the
country to get out of there. Sidebar.

Don Patrick: I love it. Well, guys, well, I’m gonna wrap it up. This was
fantastic, as I anticipated, and wanna thank you both for taking the time
and sharing with everybody. You guys do some really cool things there.

Morris Shank: Don, let me say, I wanna say this, and I’ve talked about my
study group, how important that is, but you personally have been there for
me over the years.

Don Patrick: We have a long history.

Morris Shank: I really appreciate that. I wanna say that.

Don Patrick: Obviously, it was my pleasure, and it’s great to see where
you’re at.

Morris Shank: Thank you.

Don Patrick: And you guys are on a great journey. See ya.

Morris Shank: We’ll see.

Don Patrick: All right.

Morris Shank: Buh-bye.

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

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

Until next time. See ya.