Black CFP® Series - Dominque Henderson, CFP® Episode 2

Join Dominique Henderson, CFP® and Stoy Hall, CFP® in their latest podcast episode as they discuss the importance of strategic partnerships in the financial planning industry. Dominique reflects on his past work and asks himself, "what else can there be done?" to contribute to the industry. He realizes that there is a need for effective partnerships between individuals and firms in the industry to bring about bigger and more impactful projects. 

Dominique and Stoy also stress the importance of collaboration among industry professionals and firms to create a more significant impact on financial advice and elevate more voices in the industry. Tune in to the podcast to learn more about strategic partnerships and collaboration in the financial planning industry.

https://www.domhendersonsr.com/

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Transcript

Dominque Henderson, CFP® 0:11

Started

Stoy Hall, CFP® 0:12

my man's back, Dominic Henderson. He is back. This is episode two. We'll have episode one down in the description below. But welcome back to the Black CFP series, everybody with. Mr. Henderson himself as we did last episode, we did his background, his firm, what he's involved with, his book, of course. Again, we'll have that in the description, but today's different today is gonna be more about getting more advisors into and planners into our industry. Some of you obviously have reached out to me before. I'm huge on Twitter. I'm always a proponent to bringing more into this space and this man's expert at that, so I definitely want to chop that up about that. But first, what you've been up to, it's been a few months since we had you on any updates, what's been going on?

Dominque Henderson, CFP® 0:57

Man, first of all, thanks Stoy for this platform. I'm gonna have to do more of this now that I am on a let's call it indefinite sabbatical for my podcast right now. Just got some other stuff going on. But no, I appreciate you inviting me back and hello to everyone. The last couple months have been mostly retooling. I'm a part of a couple masterminds and one of the things. I asked them to hold me accountable to is slowing down so that I can scale up the way that I want to. Had my hands in so many different things because I have such a big heart for, the subject that we're gonna talk about today. But I, in a lot of ways it was restrictive to my growth. A lot of people, they look at what I do and what I post and they're like, is it like three of you? And I'm like, I got a lot going on and I still run my wealth management firm. All that to say things are fun now. And I, and we can dive into that, but on the family side, which I always talk about cause that's part of me we're full empty nesters now. My, my son's in the military and we had a lot of travel the back, last back of half of 2022. And. So now we're like settling down and I think the second quarter's gonna be really cool for

Stoy Hall, CFP® 2:05

2023. That's awesome. Empty nesters. How did it initially feel? Or were you already ready?

Dominque Henderson, CFP® 2:11

I think there's, me and my wife have a saying. This is somewhat of a segue, but you'll get it cuz the theme of my life I, I don't really, I don't believe in tears of joy, right? So people are crying at weddings and there's stuff like that. I don't feel that because I'm happy. I'm happy. I don't think there's a point of crying if you're happy especially since the Bible says he's gonna wipe all tears from our eyes, so that means that tears of sadness. But anyways I, I said that to say I've experienced a lot of emotions over the last, few months. And like when my son was graduating from Basic and he went off to Korea and South Korea and all this other kind of stuff, like I'm really happy at the job that God's blessed me and my wife to do with our children. Like the, my, my daughter stay together and their success. A matter of fact I'm leaving to this week to go visit them. But everybody's doing good. I have no, no complaints, man. So when Empty Nest came around, it. Yeah, it's time. It's time for that. Like we with the wife, we went to the wine country a couple weeks ago. That stuff was fun. So I'm just enjoying life right now, man. I can't, I have no complaints. Hey, that's where

Stoy Hall, CFP® 3:16

we all want to get to, right? We all want to get to just be happy. Just live happy. And so I don't feel, I've, obviously, I got young kids still eight and six, so we even got to that period of time. But I believe by the time my boys are ready to leave, I'm gonna be like, you ha, just happy. Just, we're good. We're happy. Love. We'll visit you. But it's time. It is time. Yeah.

Dominque Henderson, CFP® 3:39

Love that. Love that. Let's get

Stoy Hall, CFP® 3:41

into it, man. Yeah. Yeah. So you said you're, scaling down, scaling up, always dealing with the advisors. What is the main point right now? What is the driving force as we get into it going forward?

Dominque Henderson, CFP® 3:52

Yeah. I think the best way to sum this up and then we can double click on Yep. Different points. So I finished up season seven of the podcast last November, I guess it was, and I reflected after that and I said, what else would I need to add to my body of work? And I, it means specifically me, mine, like I know there's a lot of people doing great. Most of them are friends. And that's great. But I, if I look back at the individual body of work that Dominique has contributed to financial planning my question was, what else do I need to do? What else can there be done? As far as courses or whatever, and I was like, I don't think there's much like this is year four, right? I've got four years of YouTube content, over a hundred episodes of podcasts. Dozens of people I've worked with, I don't think there's anything else I can necessarily say or put a different spin on for the aspiring financial professional, career changer, whatever. And so I was like, how can I be more effective? And that basically came to Dominic. You need to double down on strategic partnerships. There are people in this space and you guys are in your own silos kind of doing things, and you already know what you know firm owners want. You need to start connecting those dots because the one-on-one gorilla warfare is great, but at the end of the day I want to get involved in some bigger projects just because I have the aptitude too, and I have the capacity now too. That, that was my takeaway from the end of 22. So I've spent a lot of time kind of retooling the current offerings to, to cater towards that. Unfortunately that won't be a overnight switch because there's a lot of things that I have to slow down and shut down, if you will and redirect resources. But I think the eventual goal is, what I've realized is that there's a sweet spot in the R I A space where you're a growing team, you have a vision. Either you don't quite have the revenue and resources to bring people on, or the people that you have on right now have not provided the type of ROI that you want. And I particularly have a real expertise in working with those folks, getting everybody on the same board on the same page, so that they can run with that vision of the RIA owner. Now, what that means for. People trying to get into the industry, or existing financial professionals is inevitably somebody might be in the wrong spot, right? You might be on the wrong seat in the bus or the destination, all these different analogies, right? The ladders leaning up the wrong, the against the wrong building. So I want to help those people get situated. I truly believe real, and we talked about this last time, real financial advice changes family trees. However, if you're not operating in your superpower as an existing financial professional or as a career changer, you don't even know what that is yet, then we need to get you plugged in so that you can start doing those particular things.

Stoy Hall, CFP® 6:57

Yeah, absolutely. I love that. I know you talked, just talked about, Instead of being in silos all getting together. And, we pushed that last time, but we'll also push it again, is we all need to start. We need to start working together more. There needs to be more of that collaboration to your point of where you're at in your career. It's hey, there, there's only so much we can say, right? And in our industry, there's only so much we can do and say now tax changes and launch ensure. There's something new, but ultimately it's the same message over and over again. We just need to have more people speaking it to speak to those that are out there. Being and being loud, that's my 2023. Term or word, probably just the rest of my life, of just being loud and elevating everyone else because there's no way that we have enough voices to really change the dynamic of financial advice in every household. It's, we just don't have enough. I don't know if we ever will, but at least we gotta fight for it and we are not gonna get there if we're all silo in it and trying to do it separately. We really need to come together and try to push that.

Dominque Henderson, CFP® 7:59

No I totally agree. There's and we'll probably name some names, I have several friends that are in the industry that are doing separate things, and I think one of the things that that I advocate is that disruption and follows intention. It's natural for us to have an idea about something. We've all had. Broker dealer wirehouse experiences and stuff like that, and then you're like, I'm gonna go out and do this on me, on, on my own. You have some type of motivation or something that gets you there or you're not even in the industry. I've talked to a woman the other day that's spent decades in healthcare and she's just I can't do this anymore. Covid changed the game for me and I want to now get into financial services. Can you help me? And so it doesn't really matter what causes or sparks the intention, just know that disruption's about to happen and don't get afraid of that to your point. Doing it loud, it, sometimes it's hard. There is no free lunch, right? I, I've been one of the advocates and people probably shout me down for this, but I let people know that CFP may not be the route for you, cuz you got a lot of your life, you're finna give up and, just looking at the context of things. You, you may need to do some more research about what the industry's because maybe you don't want to do that. Maybe you don't want to create these great financial plans that no. Pays attention to, or the behaviors don't line up with the plans, and then the outcome is jacked up. Do you want to do that? Because a lot of this work ends up being psychological. I reading the the CFP board's client psychology book right now and I'm just piecing through there and taking my time and, the first two chapter. Have been all about behavioral finance because at the end of the day, if you cannot motivate your client or find the better term, if you cannot find what motivates your client with the outcome that they say they want stories, the game's over. It's, yeah, it's over. The game is over. Yep. There's nothing else to do. I guess you can collect fees, but at some point that relationship's gonna. A little cantankerous if there's no value being exchanged. And so what I want to shout from the rooftops or the mountaintops, if anybody was to sum up Dominique in a sentence, is that this is a very sacred seat. We sit in as a financial professional and if you're gonna come occupy this, There's gonna be some work you have to do to get there. I would advocate your own self-work first before you try to go working on somebody else. And so that's what I'm always going to preach to anyone coming in, in the industry and anyone that's currently in the industry that crosses my path. Would

Stoy Hall, CFP® 10:43

That being said though, that's putting like a God. How do I word this? Tradition and culture and, a real aura around our industry. And I feel like our industry I is getting hit for so many sides. I obviously, I see it all the time within our community of we've got all these insurance people on TikTok and all these, financial professionals quotes, right? That are really doing a disservice and now we're fighting that too on top of all of. I'm with you in terms of the prestige of being in this seat and working with people, sh is on the one of the highest levels, and I don't know what we need to do more of from our profession, but I know there needs to be something done more to make that prestige more known, well-known and felt, and we get away from the, their insurance side of things not saying insurance is bad. Everybody, listen, that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the concepts that are out there right now of don't do a 401k, go do a NPI or all that's out there. Like those things cannot be done in our industry if we are to be at this prestige. Because they're financial professionals too. They're just not CFPs or advisors. You know what I mean? I actually,

Dominque Henderson, CFP® 11:58

I, I think I agree with you, but let me raise a point here. There's a guy that's in my rotation and has been for years now. His name is Dr. Myron Gold, and I highly recommend people to subscribe to his YouTube channel and get his stuff. But he talked about his greatest takeaway from 2022, which is excellent takeaway and I'm just gonna read it verbatim. I have it here. Excellent scales, incrementally while mediocrity scales, exponential. And he got that from price's law, which basically means that, there's gonna be this cream that rises to the crop to the top. And I, I believe that in financial services what I would say the point of me saying that is we're relatively young. We're not as old as. Medicine or law. You're like 60 years old, man. So I think it a, we can give it some time for the cream to rise to the top. What I will say, just parenthetically about some of the strategies that I'm, I've been seeing on different platforms, whether that be Index Universal life or infinite banking or any of that kind of stuff. I think all this stuff has its place. But what I will say, Is, let's look at the track record. The track record of indexing Universal Life is not even old as my oldest daughter who's about to be 26. This in August. So I don't know that it has enough of track record for me to hang my. Retirement strategy future on. So just buyer beware on that. You do your research. If you're looking if you're getting financial advice off of a social platform. The other thing I would say is since, and this has been talked about a lot, but I think we should be underscored more and maybe we can double click here, but financial advice, the human element of it will never be able to be. I love chat, g p T and Jasper and all these things. But there is just no way that the human element of what we do can be replaced. Case in point, I've had three legitimate opportunities to consult in the FinTech space in the last six months. And the problem that those people always have as great as they are with their ideas from other industries is they don't get that. You cannot scale the human element of financial advice. Impossible. And so I think that's what's really unique about our industry and presents, challenge and opportunity. And for those that are willing to remain excellent and continue to raise the standard in the bar, they will thrive. I see them thriving. And those that want to cut corners and be mediocre, then see ya, you won't be around very long. So I don't even have to do much about it. And I think to your point earlier, maybe the point you were making or the point I'm iterating is I think these guys will g they will come and go alls we need is a couple of bad market cycles. All we need. Some of those caps in those index universal lives to, to never to never come to fruition or, there's zero, all that stuff. So I just think, when you're sitting down with a client and they are talking about. How they wanna spend more time with their kids and how they're, they, they don't love what they do right now. They don't feel like it, it gives them drive and motivation and purpose and they feel like they have so much more potential to fulfill and they wanna leave a legacy. Good luck with trying to, throw in one of those cookie cutter strategies with answering those type of questions.

Stoy Hall, CFP® 15:33

Yeah. And I'm on you on that too. I'm not one of the ones that like, Takes them and puts them on my own social and says how terrible that is. I've just been on the sideline watching it because I, yes, it's not overall good for people. However, if those people are the ones that are gonna take that advice and run with it and not do their research and do any of that, it doesn't matter what we say do or anything. We weren't gonna help those people anyway at this point in time. We just behavior you that behavior is not there. They are not. In the right mindset for what we do. However, we, I believe we can build off of the fact that, they are blowing up on TikTok, they're blowing on Twitter, and we can piggyback with our own content into there because then someone's scrolling and seeing it, seen it. Then they see us talking about this and go, oh, Maybe we can change or at least attack that mindset a little bit to break through. And then once something big happens in their life, guess what? They're gonna not gonna be knocking on the door of that insurance salesman or whatever strategies out there. Hey, bingo.

Dominque Henderson, CFP® 16:33

I, I, let me let me underscore what you said. I totally am a proponent for copycatting or emulating some of the marketing strategies and content strategies that are out there. Sometimes often, I'll say this cuz in the work I do, I see it all the time. Financial advisors, financial professionals, CFPs. They are some of the sharpest tools in the shed, kni, knives in the drawer, whatever, but no one knows what they do because their marketing sucks. They get a zero on marketing on a scale of one to 10. Content, they're great. But like I've always told'em, if you don't have any clients to serve, then what good is your plan? What good is your knowledge? From that standpoint I agree. There's been a couple of'em that, are popular and I'll, I'll, go back and forth with them and. I'll jump in the comments, but I'll be like, look, you guys can't knock, x, y, Z person's marketing strategy just

Stoy Hall, CFP® 17:25

because it's working.

Dominque Henderson, CFP® 17:27

They're getting involved though. Like it's working. Yeah, it is

Stoy Hall, CFP® 17:29

working. It's working Now I saw on oh, I forgot who posted this, but they said the future is financial professionals will be media c. That is the future. And I wanted to bring that one up to you after you had talked about the media side of things and what your idea on that. I'll go a little bit first on that. I believe that RAs will need to actually be better at media and marketing. Wholeheartedly, because that's just the new age. That's how you get clients. That's what they look for. However the thread went a little deeper of like turning into a full media conglomerate and focusing only on content and media. I don't see that happening, across the board, but I see it pushing everyone to. Their content, but doing it loudly on socials and correct marketing. I just don't see RAs just like all of a sudden abandoning financial planning. Like I don't at the true heart of it that I'm not gonna do that. You're not going to do that. But I do believe that we need to move in that direction of true marketing. Not the dinners are great, right? The quarterly dinners and stuff. That's that's not the world anymore. You gotta have a bigger reach and you gotta be doing more of, things that we're doing. So what's your opinion on that quote of RAs turning into media companies? Yeah.

Dominque Henderson, CFP® 18:45

So I'm a historian analogy guy. So let's just say that I had a stadium field with 10,000. People that speak a different language than me, they all speak the same language. I just don't speak it. So let's say they're all Spanish speakers and I speak English well, I'm hiring you Stoy to translate in those three parties, the speaker, which is myself, the translator, which is you and the audience who's the most important, I would argue you are because, I can have all this great information, and if you mistranslate it, then they're gonna be looking at me sideways. I say that to say I, in that particular, in instance, you are the media, you're the medium. That's what media comes from, that word, medium. And for any r i a, for any financial professional that is that wants to help people with financial advice I think it's your respons. To have a media presence. Now, to your point, how big do you grow that? How big a piece of the pie do you want? That's what it boils down to. Who do you wanna serve? And that's what you know. Identifying who your ideal client avatar. These are things that are very important. Who do you en enjoy working with? I'll tell you right now, I don't wanna work with everybody. Like I just don't have a desire to. Because of my upbringing, because of my disposition. Personality wise, there's just certain people I don't gel. And I tell'em in the prospect, I was like, this is not gonna be a good fit. I'm just not gonna waste your time or your let you waste my time. Let we this mutually part at this point. So I think that's good. That's actually a good thing. Media presence. Yes. Media companies. That's a whole business model, which I think most RIAs are not good at. It's hard enough to get good at one.

Stoy Hall, CFP® 20:31

It really, you're not wrong.

Dominque Henderson, CFP® 20:34

So I don't know that, that now granted you have people like a and I'll throw out a couple names, which I think they won't mind, nor will you. But you have people like Tiffany Leche, the Buda. You have people like Britney Castro, you have people like earn Your Leisure where they have parlayed a really expertise, a mastery at a certain thing to another level that has allowed that media part of their business to grow more. But again, you gotta get good at one thing first, right? So I think that's probably where it starts.

Stoy Hall, CFP® 21:09

Yeah, I agree. I agree. What is your point on that one? Did you see the Vanguard article come out today at all?

Dominque Henderson, CFP® 21:15

No. No. What is

Stoy Hall, CFP® 21:15

this? And I didn't have enough time to dive into it, but they're getting rid of their advi. You remember they went to the whole financial planning and did I forgot what it was. It was either free or$10 something cheap. To give advice, whatnot. They're getting rid of that whole. And only doing retirement planning back to what they're originally doing. So to your point AUM pays the bills. Yep, sure does. But back to what we were talking about earlier of the advice side of the game, having that personal touch, they basically had a call center, would be my opinion. I don't know how else Vanguard would've done it but a call center, not very, that's not gonna be very personal. When things happen, they're not gonna have the experience. So I thought it was interesting that Vanguard came out and said, you know what? We're gonna. We need some a u m. We're gonna go back, we're gonna go back and get away from this whole advice thing. Cuz it ain't working.

Dominque Henderson, CFP® 22:01

This is a very interesting point. Oh man. There's so many ratted trails on this story. I think for the let's just, let's address the different audiences that are listening to this. I think that's the best way to, here you go. At this point I'm a career changer. I'm looking at this and I'm looking at what I feel I have a passion to do. Let's just say for kicks and grins, you've done all the research and this is what you wanna. You just, you got that gap between where you are now and where you want to be which may be financial in nature and a lot of different things. You're listening to this podcast and you happen to read that article and you go, wow, okay. Yeah. So that's pretty interesting. Oh, why didn't that work? Cause that's a great question to ask. Vanguard has a access to a lot of resources, including financial. Why couldn't they make financial. Planning, why couldn't they do that at scale? That's a really good question because a lot of people have tried it and a lot of people are trying it, and why doesn't that work? And then to the existing financial professional, I'll dress all in first and then I'll come back with the answer. Like you're looking at your business model and you're saying, man, I need to be able to get more clients in for X price. I need to be able to do, this type of. To attract my ideal client and whatever your situation is where you're trying to add more clients, maybe in the same vein that Vanguard did, but obviously at a smaller scale. And here's the inevitable answer. Everybody wants to feel special. Here's a story. So my wife and her mom just went out of town. They went to Cancun for this girl's trip thingy, and she went to go pick up her mom. Y. And her mom, my mother-in-law was looking at her nails cuz my wife had just got her nails done and she was like, oh, let's look real nice. And so long story short, my wife is do you wanna put your nails down before we leave? And she's yeah, let's go do that. So my wife calls up the place where she goes to and she goes, Hey, this is Brianna. Can I speak with her girl? My mom, I'm bringing my mom through. We're going to Cancun tomorrow and she need to have her nails done. Yeah. Do her like, you do me, da. And they were like, oh, no problem, Brianna. You come here all the time. We'll treat your mom, da. So my, hours pass. I come back and pick up my mother-in-law and she's just just g fun about this experience she had at the nail shop. I've never had this before. I've never, that's what your financial planning client. That's why you can't do it at scale.

Stoy Hall, CFP® 24:31

No. No, you can't. And I don't even know how to put a number to it. I used to say that really. A planner could really only have 40. I think that was like the max I was thinking in my mind, 40 to six. It just depends. Obviously your model, I don't need to get into those details, but truly to have that experience, like 40 I is where I see that and it's because of that, right? The only way to really scale as a firm is like you just need more planners that have 40 people. And if planners would think about, Hey, if I just got my 40 the ideal 40 you have, you are living a good. You're probably not as stressed as trying to get really big scale and you're taking care of them to a degree that you won't have to worry about anything because they want that. People truly want, in my opinion to have that person with them, for the ride, for the life. They don't want to have to go build another relationship. Think about just our own relationships. You don't really want to go get married again and, divorce and date and do all that thing and learn who they are. And do you don't wanna do that Really? Ultimately,

Dominque Henderson, CFP® 25:30

I tell my wife, if you die, I'm like I'm done. Yeah, I'm done. I'm not going through that

Stoy Hall, CFP® 25:34

again. No. Not at all. Learn their family again and like all the nuances. No, I'm good. People don't want that on their financial planner either. They don't want to do all that. They want to build that relationship. And you just have to be able to understand your scale is there is a max, and I think that's where a lot of the firms aren't understanding. There is a max to that. Now, the a u m side of it, when you're just collecting assets it's a different thing from the planning perspective. You can't help a thousand people as a person. It's just not possible unless you just don't, aren't gonna be that close to'em. Cuz there's no way that you can do an annual review of a thousand. Hell,

Dominque Henderson, CFP® 26:11

hundreds. Oh yeah. And I, and what I would argue is it gets back to that whole notion about your client want to feel special. So I, I think people forget that it's called financial services. Like your goal is to serve that means that the client's interests come first. And I am talking about fiduciary. I'm just talking about just like ground level. What am I here for? Oh, I'm here to help somebody else get to where they. That's the whole notion of it. If you have some other notion you're probably gonna get disappointed and you're probably gonna disappoint the people that you're trying to work with because it is about service. It's a, it's about asking them what will make their life the most complete and attempting the darnedest to deliver on that. That's it. That's your. It's not more complicated than that. No,

Stoy Hall, CFP® 27:06

it really isn't. It really isn't. I know we talked about, our setup as a modern family office and I said, I think family offices are the future. It's cuz it's just concept. It has nothing to do with actual family office that's the same, it's the same mindset. It's the same concept that is the same thing. Everyone wants to be the king and queen. Everyone wants to have the luxuries of life be as stress free as possible and taken care of. That's what they want. And to me, that's just what our industry and our duty is. It's been wrapped up around, mainly family offices are the ones that do that. But that's what it is. And that's who you should be no matter what your model or whatever you have from a fee structure standpoint. Just do that.

Dominque Henderson, CFP® 27:47

Just do that. And you bring up an interesting point. I would argue. And maybe incorrectly since you actually run your practice that way. But I would argue that if you maintain what we call your ideal amount of capacity, I'm gonna argue somewhere between 40 and 50 households, like you said whether you are solo or not, because it scales, if you want a five person firm, 40 to 50 per person, right? Period. The big numbers just add more people. But the I guess my point is, if you do that, then you can have the family office experience for every client. Because that's what they want. To your point, they want the ability to be like, let me call up Dom, let me call up Stoy, and he's gonna handle this problem that involves taxes, estates insurance, and cash flow. I'm gonna have one conversation and he's gonna figure out the rest. Correct. Then I'm gonna go about doing what I was doing. That's what they wanna do. They don't want 15 people like now there are people like that, and what I would argue is they're not ready for real financial planning. Correct. They're just not. Like the whole point of having a financial pro in, in, oh my gosh, let me say it, make sure I say this because there's gonna be consumers of financial, professional consumers of cons, financial services that may hear this wrong. So I'm gonna be really clear on what I'm trying to articulate. This is a trust game. At the end of the day when we. I am ex trying to secure your trust. So we're making trust deposits in this relationship the whole time. Now, just like in my marriage, when trust is at its height, at its zenith there's no reason for this control freak nature. Like I trust my wife, she trusts me, so she doesn't need to control what I. So if you're in a relationship, let's flip this back to financial planner and consumer financial services. If you feel like you have to have 15 of me because you don't really trust what one of me does, you've done it wrong. That's what it just means. And that may be on the planner and that may be on the client, but the point is over time you're depositing trust so that. You don't have to feel in control about that, so you can go do what you want to

Stoy Hall, CFP® 30:09

do. You're right. I think the best part you just said about that was over time. Yeah. This is. Obviously the first trust is just take the leap, hire me and let's do this thing together. But planners and advisors and just professionals and actually everybody we're talking to right now has to understand that this money, wealth journey is a long term game. It is actually a game you'll probably ne there's no winning it, it's just a journey. However, you can succeed very well at it, but there's no winning. There's no win. You just do better at it. But it's a long-term thing and it's a big relationship. Not only for you, right? You go back to what you're talking about. You need to know you first before you can help others. Our job, cuz we know who we are, is when we come to you, client. We need to get you to know who you are then we can build all that wealth and everything. But if we don't take care of that, and that could take a year, two years, three years, it take, it could take whatever it is. That's the value. That is the hardest thing I believe in our industry to derive and to show is that piece

Dominque Henderson, CFP® 31:22

and that's well and what you're intimating. And I've I've been thinking about this for a long time. Story like I, my, the greatest compliment I'm gonna have from a client. And granted, I get a lot of great ones and so if my clients are listening to this or come across this, don't feel offended, but one of the greatest compliments I'm ever gonna. Is for a client to work with me. And over time they no longer identify who they are by what they do. They identify themselves by who they are meant to be, which is something that I've given them a pathway to by the work we've done. Cuz I am so tired of people like, and I get it, but what do you do? What do you do? What do you do? Dude, we're not human doings, right? We're human beings. So I want my clients to identify themselves as the person they have been able to become through the financial freedom, through the knowledge, through the education, through the less stress that the relationship with me has provided. That would be the highest compliment paid.

Stoy Hall, CFP® 32:27

I'm pausing cuz I want everyone to really take that one in cuz that's what it is. That's what it's about. You get that compliment. You've changed, you legitimately changed lives. Most of these companies have changed lives, all that stuff in their, mission statements. That, that's the answer right there. Yeah, that's it right there. It truly is. I agree. I agree. So everything we've talked about is you as a planner, advisor, clients all of that. The bear, we've talked about barriers before, but the entry into this field or the transition from one seat of the bus to the other there is, advisor finder there is fa match. There's a lot out there within those realms. And I'm sure you've done your research on those. What is the most difficult thing. Finding and getting someone on the right seat of the bus for them and their perspective of there's a lot of us out there. How, what's the first step? What are you doing to help in that? And then how can we, help even

Dominque Henderson, CFP® 33:27

more. Couple things come to mind. I was just scribbling some things down. So if you're on this, if you're on the bus because you're a financial profess yeah, let's bifurcate. So you're in the industry, you're existing, you could be in the wrong place, right? So that's one thing because there's obviously for whatever reason I know what the reason is, but we don't need to get into that. But there's a there's a lower barrier entry to, in this industry. Yes. This is a very low barrier of entry, so you tend to get. That, after year one, maybe even after, month six, they won't be here. And that is what it is. I don't know that we're gonna be able to change that without a lot of changes to regulation. So you could be in the wrong seat. How do you get to the right seat? I think it goes back to what we just said. You gotta know yourself. You gotta start with yourself. Most people that I consult with and coach have not created a financial plan for the. If I woke them up of a co-sleep, they could not tell me what their vision for their life is. These are things that seem like they're cursory, but they're very important because if you're gonna be sitting in front of a client talking to them about these things and you haven't done them to yourself you wanna talk about imposter syndrome like that. There's a just a level of confidence and certainty that you will not have, even if those things have not worked for you on the first try. You were not successful. That's. You got something to talk about, like you have some scars and some wounds that you can actually relate to the client, which is, that's the name of the game anyway. For the person that's in the wrong place you gotta do some self-discovery first because I, what I see, and I have a perspective consulting client and her situation is she's hopped around to three or four different situ. Since the time I've been doing jumpstart, like just four years, and there's no reason for that amount of turnover. Now let me just hop down one little bunny trailer. It could be that you are a solo situation building your book or independent, and you don't need to be, that could be the wrong seat you're in too. You might need to partner with somebody. So I think, but all that comes. Self-discovery and self-awareness. So I don't know, you might wanna pause there before we move on to the aspiring financial professional. But tho those are my thoughts.

Stoy Hall, CFP® 35:51

No, I think you're right. And it's more to the point you just made at the, that little bunny trail. It's big bunny trail. I just talking to a lot of solos out there that, I don't wanna say they're on the wrong seat. They just need more seats and teammates around. Ultimately we, again, back to our point at the beginning, we need to help each other lift each other up because this industry is not that easy to learn all of those things. It takes time. Oh yeah. Ultimately. And that's where our experience and education all that comes from. You just gotta keep learning and learning. If you're not there yet, guess what? Go find Dom and Stoy and learn. Until you get to the point, then you can help others. There's that little bunny part, but let's let's jump over to the aspiring ones. Okay. For

36:35

the

Dominque Henderson, CFP® 36:35

career changer. And I've done a lot of research on this and most people that have followed me know, but you basically have an 18 month. Window of time, especially if you go the c CFP route and it can be longer then. And then that factors in the, are you married, do you have kids, do you have other things? So like really from start to finish and like literally like deuces to whatever you're doing and entering into this industry. It takes some time to your point. I think, one of the best things you can do past the research part, which is like table stakes to me is people often do this backwards, and I don't know why, cuz it doesn't make much logical sense once I explain it. But hopefully more people will listen to this and they will do it my way. The way or the way that I've observed would probably give them less pain, let's put it that way, and cost them less. Most people hear about certified financial planner. Let's just say they see the advertisement, they do whatever. They go Hey, I see Dom, I see story. This is, and they immediately go roll in classes. I don't think you should do that. I love the cfp. I probably wouldn't do any other designation. But at the end of the day, I think it's a big ask for a career changer to not have gone to, NARI, as my wife would say, f p meeting, to meet any CFPs, to ask them what their job is like and how they like it, and what they would change about it, and what mistakes have they made and blah. Like the, when you do that first, do that first, see if CFP is for you. And I would say spend I mean before covid, they used to have luncheons in the DFW area every month where you can just pay 30 bucks, go get a meal and meet a room full of financial planners. Find and environments like that because I think that part of getting the experience, talking to people, and let me just say parenthetical. Do that because it's much cheaper and less insulting than asking someone like myself or somebody that's established, can I pick your brain? No, you cannot. Like I've been building this body of knowledge for 20 years. Unless you've watched every YouTube video that I've made and every podcast, no, you cannot have a free hour of my time. That doesn't even make sense. Anyways, I digress.

Stoy Hall, CFP® 38:56

No, I get you cuz I still do some CFP board mentee work, mentor work, and Kat came to me, I think he's actually in the DC area. Speaking of that came to me cuz he had lost his job in banking or whatever and immediately has been starting one to enroll into, courses. And he Is that the best route? I'm like, no, you just need to get in the industry. If that's what you're gonna do, go get in it. Because you're not gonna, it don't matter if you, pa I don't, lemme back up. If you take the time to do all the courses, that's fine. You're gonna have some type of knowledge. You'll have zero experience. You won't even have the CFP designation cuz you don't qualify for it. Cuz you don't have the experience. You're out thousands of dollars not out. You've used. Thousands of dollars that you should have been doing and using for luncheons or just in your back pocket for cash flow while you build up your business. And he's would someone hire me, after I, I graduated and get a salary? And I was like, maybe they're probably firms out there, but guess what? They're gonna want experience, they're gonna experience otherwise it doesn't matter what you. So

Dominque Henderson, CFP® 40:08

think about that. Yeah. I couldn't say it any more succinctly than you just said, but I, what I will layer onto that is people don't realize this, and I did this after many conversations with firm owners, and this is the reality career changer. I'm talking to you now. The reality is from day one until about, let's call it month 20. Best case you represent negative ROI to that firm. It is what it is people are that are more productive that are already there. Whether that's the owner or somebody that they've hired have to leave what they're doing that is already cash flowing the firm and teach you the workflows, the culture, the everything they have to, somebody has to do that. There's opportunity costs that represent probably about 18 to 24 months of negative. Since you cannot change that, you do well to find the ways that you can add value from day one, even if it's the stuff that you don't wanna do, that you do not associate with financial planning that you think is not sexy, that blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But at the end of the day, I've always talked to firm owners that have said, Dominique, if you find me somebody with cfp, that is great, but if you find me somebody that just. You know the work ethic, like the wanting to get in and help, collaborating with the team, can work independently when they need to, that I don't have to tell something, 15 times and worry about if it's gonna be done, bring me that person and I'll teach'em the rest. CF p's great. Eight grand and 18 to 24 months of your life is a lot of money and time that you could be redirecting To your point, to other, what I would call more fruitful things, I always tell my story. I was 15 years in the industry before I decided to do cfp. For a multitude of reasons so that when I passed my test, it was really just check the box. I already got the experience type of deal. Eh, it might be not the most ideal situation for most people. However, what I would say is a after and just a little bit of my story so people can be encouraged. So they're like, Dom, that's too hard. This impossible. No it's not. So I I was, I had my own book and I was flaming. I was making it, but not really. I was with a broker dealer that was local that mostly want you to sell insurance. Then they got sold, said I had nowhere to go, so I spent about 18 months trying to find a place. Then I found a place, and this ra was already successful, already had it running. He needed me to come in there. The thing he knew that, or the thing he needed was that in 90 days, He was leaving the wirehouse and going to a hybrid model and he was about to hire a firm to help him do that. I had just spent nine years in the operations department of a hedge fund learning SQL databases and related all that kind of stuff. And I had a skillset that I was like, dude, I can do this for you. And we end up taking a project that he thought was gonna take 90 days or longer and doing it in 30. Moved his entire book of business, 320 million or so. So immediately he was like, who's this dude? Yep. And from there I was able to kinda say, this is what I want on my career path. I had his attention. And so I say that to say the point of the career changer in the sparring financial professional is to, like you said, get in the industry. Starting experience, get the attention of someone. By providing value, by providing what they need. Serve. Remember that? That's what you need to do. Like you're not gonna be creating plan financial plans. And if you are, that's great. They probably won't mean much because again, like risk factor wise, you're not gonna be the lead. You're gonna be a junior on something or the second chair. So the point is get in there and provide value to the team. See where you can find value and then. Opportunities will open up for you. They will. Inevitably they will, and if they don't because you got a knucklehead boss or something like that, I get it. You might have to move around, but explore everything

Stoy Hall, CFP® 44:06

first. Sure. You do that. Absolutely love it. You nailed that one. Nailed it. And we can end on that one. I know we can go a lot long time.

Dominque Henderson, CFP® 44:13

We got a lot, both of us have a lot. We have deep wells. We have deep

Stoy Hall, CFP® 44:16

wells. You're, you are not wrong there. So we'll get you back on sometime this year. So we ain't gonna play with that. But I do appreciate your time. I know this one's gonna resonate. Maybe not right at first, but this will be one of those that lingers around. It's some heart

Dominque Henderson, CFP® 44:29

medicine. Yeah, it's some heart

Stoy Hall, CFP® 44:30

medicine. I, there, there really is. And there's a lot to take. Everybody there really is. So if you need some help, reach out. If you're involved and want to be louder and whatnot, again, reach out. We need to partner. We need to be on the same level and pushing each other higher. And not living in these silos. Dom, I appreciate your time, everything that you're doing. Actually like that you're dedicating more time to what you're doing a little less on the podcast, cuz I feel, trust me, I feel the time it takes. But definitely appreciate that and everything that you do.

Dominque Henderson, CFP® 45:01

No, I'll just say I, I've now that the podcast is not like it used to be and I'm still flirting with different ideas, it's just like the, the struggle. The struggle is real. It is real. But I'll say I've been able to do more enterprise consulting and even one-on-one coaching, which I think is going to be a lot more helpful to to give some of these messages, like what we talked about right now to the next generation of planners, and not necessarily next generation from an age standpoint, but just the next guard. And when we take this and we level this thing, For the next, let's call it 50 years, twenty five, fifty years what are those planner's mindsets gonna be like? I really want to be part of that movement. And so that's what I'm doing now.

Stoy Hall, CFP® 45:44

Hey man. I love it, brother. Love it.

Dominque Henderson, CFP® 45:47

Good stuff, man. Thanks for having me. Yeah, absolutely. The proceeding program was sponsored by Black Mammoth. Any awards, rankings, or recognition by unaffiliated third parties or publications are in no way indicative of the advisors future performance or any individual client's investment success. No award ranking or recognition should be construed as a current or past endorsement of black mammoth. Information regarding specific awards, rankings, or recognitions is available on the Black Mammoth website, www.black mammoth.com. All investment strategies have the potential for profit or laws. Investment strategies such as asset allocation, diversification, or rebalancing do not assure or guarantee better performance and cannot eliminate the risk of investment losses. There are no guarantees that a portfolio employing these or any other strategy will outperform a portfolio that does not engage in such strateg. This broadcast should not be construed by any client or prospective client as a solicitation to affect or attempt to affect transactions and securities or the rendering of personalized investment advice due to various factors including changing market conditions. The information discussed in this broadcast may no longer be reflective of current positions or recommendations. While information presented is believed to be factual and up to date, black mammoth, do not guarantee its accuracy and it should not be regarded as a complete analysis of the subjects discussed. The tax and the state planning information discussed is general in nature and is provided for informational purposes only and should not be construed as legal or tax advice. Listeners should consult an attorney or tax professional regarding their specific legal or tax situation. Past performance is not indicative of future results.