Only Fee-Only
This podcast interviews fee-only financial planners to learn about how they are helping their clients and serving their specific niches.
Only Fee-Only
#101 - Simon Granner on Building a Personal CFO Network for Entrepreneurs
In our 101st episode, we sit down with Simon Granner, founder of PCFO, to explore his journey from his early days to building a network of personal CFOs that help entrepreneurs manage their finances. Simon shares how PCFO supports business owners at every stage, offering the same strategic support a corporate CFO would provide.
We dive into exit and entry planning, growth strategies, and how Simon’s team delivers clear, client-first financial advice. He also talks about the importance of honest branding and collaboration in building strong client relationships.
Social:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/simongranner/
X: @SimonGranner
Music in this episode was obtained from Bensound.
What's going on? This is the only fee only podcast and today we are crossing the 100 mark by one, the 101st episode of the only fee only podcast. And we have Simon Graneron, who is the founder of PCFO, which is CFO, a network of personal CFOs helping entrepreneurs find their flow, and what they do is they help people that are doing exit planning, entrance planning, so leaving larger companies. He uses the example of maybe an Oracle employee wanting to go out and start a business and, at the end of the day, helping them manage money so that it could be less stressful. So interesting concept for sure. He explains it much better than I could. So, with that being said, here is Simon Dude Granner on the Only Fee Only podcast.
Speaker 2:What's up everyone? Welcome to another episode of the Only Fee Only podcast. I'm Peter Travello. I'm here with my co-host, brock Buckles. How's it going today, brock?
Speaker 1:I'm doing well, man. I'm just sitting here looking at Simon's excellent hair. That's what we're doing here. I'm looking at.
Speaker 3:Peter's lack of commitment to his excellent hair. He's got great hair, but he had longer hair and he's a quitter. He couldn't do it but he had.
Speaker 2:He had longer hair and he's a quitter. He couldn't. He couldn't do it once upon a time. But it is summer down here in miami beach and it is very, very hot, so maybe in the uh winter months we will start growing back out.
Speaker 3:But um, to be fair, though, you're traveling a lot, so probably so you don't have access to combs and things where, like people in fixed locations with families, you know we like do the same stuff regularly.
Speaker 2:So yeah, got to mix it up. I'd be ready for anything, but really excited to have you on today. Man, you are like the man of mystery to me and to many others. You know I've been following your work when you're Simon Dude, now you're Simon Granner, so really just kind of want to have you on here today, share your story. I know you're an entrepreneur at heart and yeah, man, let's just have a conversation this afternoon.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So first of all, point of addressing Simon Dude. Dude is legally my middle name, so that's legitimately. I wish I had a passport to show you right now, but you know you got to come to the live event and buy tickets. No, I'm just kidding, but yeah, but also legally Simon Granner and I'm like. You know it worked for a while at the beginning of COVID and I'm like I think this is people think I'm an idiot, so I'll just use my real name and so I'm Granner is what I put on there, but I put the little dude in the parentheses just in case there's some some early, early OGs. But I forgot what your question was. Your question was what, what am I doing? Or something like that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so let's talk about um, you know, pcfo, um, like what your work is now, and then we'll dive into what you were doing before, when it was the simon dude era. Um, you know, I know, you've built up your brand this.
Speaker 3:This is it. Where's the camera? This is pcfo. So if anyone is like, what's pcfo? It's commitment to dmV. Uh, vanity plates is what it is. So we have two, uh, we have a nice car and we have a junker. The junker has PCFO on the back and there's no place to bolt it on the front. So so I get this cool license plate tchotchke in my office and what it is is it stands for personal CFO.
Speaker 3:So think about, like, what a company does. They hire a CFO, a chief financial officer, and that CFO goes into the company and they I don't know, I've never been a CFO of a company but find a CFO and ask them what they do. They'll be able to tell you they help the company manage the money and make financial decisions and give reporting to the CEO so that they can make strategic, visionary decisions. And then they're like marketing you're spending too much. Stop that. They're the financial control system and ideally, a strategic partner to the business, even if they're an internal person. So a personal CFO is you guessed it that for a person. And the way that we define this. It started as it came out of my financial planning practice, where I was working with people that weren't always business owners or entrepreneurs, but I found that the people that resonated that needed financial planning more. I know you guys do a lot of fixed fee work with fixed fee advisors. If they're going to pay a fee or have complex problems, business owners and entrepreneurs typically have the highest, most complicated problems.
Speaker 3:And what we found specifically is we have this progression from salesman to self-employed to small business, or salesman, self-employed, small business owner, shareholder of a closely held corporation. This is like the path that I want to go on when I grow up, probably the path that you guys are on. You guys were salesmen in Northwestern and that maybe sort of self-employed, and then you're like self-employed selling insurance, and then you're like, let's turn this into a business or something. Maybe like, should we hire someone? That'd be cool. So we're not just you know, and then we're not doing it. Then you're like, well, maybe like, wouldn't it be cool if we could build this thing and sell it in 20 years? That'd be cool. I don't know how to do it, but maybe we'll figure it out.
Speaker 3:It's like the entrepreneurial progression and so we we at personal at PCFO, which we've simplified it to we want to help that person. We want to help that person. We want to help the entrepreneur at any stage, whether you're exiting your business, whether you're entering the business. This other enter planning concept we have it's like the opposite of exit planning. It's like a W-2 sales rep at Oracle.
Speaker 3:A personal CFO will help them leave their job without going bankrupt and losing their wife and kids and then navigate the transition from employment to ideally self-employment, to small business ownership, to whatever. And then on the upper end, it's like cool, give me a business owner with $5 million of net profit. That person is wildly disorganized. They're successful. Their business partners are like wow, how do you do it?
Speaker 3:But they're a complete nut job psychopath and their life is chaos because they don't have a job anymore. They're a real entrepreneur and they have a manager that manages their business and then technicians under them. They don't work no more, but yet they make millions of dollars a year. Who helps them with their P&L personally? Who helps them with their cashflow personally? And the more. We've done consulting in this space with advisors and with their clients. These are not money problems Like how to budget and save on, don't like they know how to make money and they just don't know how to, and they even know how to manage it to the point where they are. But it's like do I buy a 80 foot yacht or a 60 foot yacht and that kind of stuff, where it's like, who's gonna help them with that? Right, I believe a personal CFO or a PCFO will, and it's taken me 15 years to figure that out and we're just getting started now, so excited to see where it goes.
Speaker 1:So nailed down on that idea more, though, because I think there's an important distinction, because there's probably people listening, or you could make the assumption. Oh well, like if they wanted to figure out the difference between the 80 and 60 yacht you know, I as a financial planner could probably do that, but what is it that you guys are offering that's different than that? Just so we can be crystal clear here.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so great question. Knowledge, as we all know. Or if there's a financial planner listening or an entrepreneur listening, if you're a financial planner listening, you know behavior gap, you know that. You know if someone charges 1% for investment management and it's you know we're going to get you 7%, cool, that's you know kind of a lame value prop, but whatever. But. Or you could say you know people destroy, you know the opposite of that is like going, losing all the money, losing 40% a year, because you always make the wrong decision at the wrong time. It's behavior. So it's not knowledge, and I don't know this for a fact, but I would bet money that people like Kitsis and Justin Goodbread and Ron Carson and really successful, really smart people would either have trusted advisors that are slow down, put the brakes on because your brain moves too fast, type people, or they would do better if they did.
Speaker 3:I do, I'm an entrepreneur. I just know financial stuff, which is a problem because my brain moves like an entrepreneur. But my field of study is financial planning. It doesn't make me a good financial planner. I thought I was when I was acting as a financial planner. Now I realize I'm an entrepreneur with a coaching specialty that focuses on financial planning. That's it. I suck at financial planning. I'm terrible at managing money. I'm an entrepreneur and they told me I was a financial planner when I was at Thrivent.
Speaker 1:Okay, yeah, that's an important distinction.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and so not every financial advisor is an entrepreneur. Many of them are the most successful ones I've found are an entrepreneur at heart, and entrepreneurs are definitely not good at managing money and deciding what's good and wrong. And just because they can do it doesn't mean that an outside, objective, third party just to slow them down and say do you need that? Yep, do you want that? If you do, cool, you can totally afford it. If you don't need it, why are you doing that? And then oftentimes they'll be like I don't know, because I'm impulsive, so shifting from impulse to intention, I don't know, because I'm impulsive, so shifting from impulse to intention, I believe a personal CFO or PCFO or insert any other trusted advisor here, that's just Thomas Koppelman doesn't call himself a PCFO, doing PCFO conceptual work, probably Very similar to what we talk about or do. So I don't know if that answers your question.
Speaker 1:You know, so I don't know if that answers your question, but yeah, I think it, I think it touches it, I think it definitely clarifies it a little bit. I mean, you guys are just it's. It's different. You're not trying to manage money, you're trying to just help people understand what they should be doing with things outside of their investment, like lifestyle stuff, like that. Right, it's like you're not going to sit here and pick things in a portfolio. You're not going to sit here and you know be calling Schwab every day or you know individually picking stocks, like that's not what you're doing.
Speaker 3:Well, so we've actually come sort of full circle on this. It's funny how, as you, I consider PCFO and innovation my innovation laboratory and because I own the thing, I get to change it all the time Whenever there's a new upgrade in mindset, vision, belief system, strategy. I fully admit to people I don't know what I'm doing. I'm making it up, we're figuring it out, you want to figure it out with us? We're, we have been innovating since I've released the shackles of compliance. Uh, as you guys you know, welcome, it's nice, nice, right, yeah, uh, it sucks in that world and my creativity was stifled and so I started this coaching program as simon dude program and it was based on what I did at thrivent, and an unbelievable amount has changed and developed over the last four years. But now our the latest vision belief system is kind of like the. I could actually even just draw this, but it's enter. Let me get a Sharpie that works Exit, enter, and so the other license plate I would get would be enter. It's like the opposite of exit planning. And so this is SIPA, let's help them grow and sell, sell their business value acceleration, enter planning. And the other side is like well, if someone is exiting the business, who's entering the business and how do we get into it? That's cool. But then on the other side it's like once you sell the business, what do you do with the money and how do you manage it?
Speaker 3:And I think Chad Willardson has done a really good job of creating a model, for he bills on assets, but he doesn't care, and he does. They do investment management, but their value prop isn't investment management. Thomas Kauffman's kind of figured this out too. I would be very surprised if his business wasn't wildly AUM billing with 80% planning focus. And they do the investment management in-house because it's a convenience offer to their clients. But they're not calling them every quarter and saying, hey, something moved, it's stupid, I got nothing, I'm making stuff up. This is wildly unvaluable. You don't even want to take my call. But then they do the trades because that is valuable to manage the investment management process, just the advisory part of it.
Speaker 3:We're doing it with a planning lens. If we're doing AUM, it's hey, man, you got 5 million bucks. We charge 1%, we charge $50,000 a year. I don't care how you pay us. You want to pay us out of your investment account or out of your checking account? No problem. It's probably more convenient to pay over here, but this is what we're going to do for $50,000 a year.
Speaker 3:And so, to come full circle on the AUM, I'm trying to get advisors to not manage money and place trades and get paid on advice and then charge more if they're going to push the buttons on the investment accounts. It's less liability, frankly, to be like, hey, just do it at Schwab, just put it at Vanguard, your 401k is fine. Thomas has figured this out too. It's like I have a fee minimum and out of convenience, we might manage money Like Andy. Andy Pankow, the same thing. You know, it's like a, it's like a bundled offer, but at the end of the day, it's like transparency and partnership and, uh, doing the right thing for the client and telling them how you get paid Right and being transparent and honest about that. You know.
Speaker 1:So you are you. I mean you talk about those guys, you're working alongside those guys as well, or is it kind of a separate offering together, like those guys might be the right fit for certain clients. We might be the right fit for other clients, like what is the what's the dynamic there?
Speaker 3:uh, with my clients or with the people that I mentioned like would you work alongside, like yeah, with your clients, right?
Speaker 3:so we have so our business is a, a community coaching and consulting business. Okay, uh, community at the base level is do you want to join pcfo club? It's 500 bucks a month. Um, we do masterminds. It's a community. It's a school group. Um, that's actually new as of january and it's should have figured that out four years ago, holy cow. You guys should have a school group, by the way, everyone should. Yeah, it's should have figured that out four years ago, holy cow, you guys should have a school group, by the way, everyone should. Yeah, it's. I'm like a school salesman now, because it's the coolest thing ever. We did Facebook and Kajabi and just unintegrated, and now it's like anyone that becomes a client of mine, even at a consulting level. They have to tell me I don't want to be in the school community, otherwise they're going in it. Yep, so community first.
Speaker 3:Coaching is we do multiple different coaching tiers. We're starting to bring on other coaches, like Kevin Donovan is the latest person that we brought in to do a $30 million families coaching cohort, which we're doing as like a partnership with him, but he's got a PCFO email address and then consulting is like we do. If it's a business owner and it's big enough, we don't manage PCFO as a company doesn't manage investments. Almost all of our advisors do, though I'm struggling to think if there's even a single one of them that doesn't have an investment advisory license or an RIA or an IAR, but we don't. We have an insurance agency, which we don't really use.
Speaker 3:I'd like to use that at some point as we get deeper into the business space and we do consulting stuff with business owners that are much bigger, mostly around the exit planning stuff, but even those are like side hustles. Community and coaching is like the meat and bread and butter, yeah, and we're dabbling in the other things. Just to you know, there's big opportunities. Okay, we'll take that, you know, sure? Um, so yeah, I don't know if that answers your question.
Speaker 1:it probably doesn't either I answered like 10 questions, simon, okay, okay, yeah, yeah, do you have something, pete?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I mean your headline on LinkedIn serving $30 million families. So I mean where are you finding these people to be? Or like, when you say $30 million families, like where's the range, what's the minimum fee? Because you know, I feel like some advisors they hear about you know a large AUM client or you know they hear about some metric and they're like that's great, but where do I find these people? Like where?
Speaker 3:do they even live?
Speaker 2:What are they doing? Yeah, how do I prospect to them?
Speaker 3:Well. So if you read, if you read the full, the full headline, it's serving $30 million families and those becoming $30 million families. And, as a CTA, if you're listening to this, pcfoco slash webinar has an entire 60-minute webinar on this exact. It's like 25 minutes of Simon teaching my personal CFO accelerator course and then 25 minutes of Kevin teaching my personal CFO accelerator course, and then 25 minutes of Kevin teaching exactly that, like several strategies on how to attract, convert and expand relationships with $30 million families. Um, there's no pitch that you can't buy anything on it. It's purely educational, but it's a that's. That's a good. That would be. That would be a better answer that I'm going to give right now off the top of my head.
Speaker 3:But the short answer is it's who, not how, right? So our minds have all been blown by Dan Sullivan's book. We've read it and it's like whoa, what was I doing my whole life Figuring out how to do everything? So it's not how do you find them? It's who has them which? You guys are sales guys, right, brock, especially? Look at his tan, right, burn, I'd call this more of a burn Sales burn.
Speaker 3:But it's who has your. You guys are a perfect case study of this. How do we sell insurance and build a successful insurance agency in a B2B format? Or who has clients and are not willing to sell insurance because of conflict of interest? Your entire business model is predicated on collaboration and it's freaking genius, right? No offense, toot the horn like that. It's um. That's why I'm so interested in you guys, cause it's it's you.
Speaker 3:You came from a world where you said we do everything here, and then you intentionally decided to not just like. I intentionally don't manage investments and it is everything in my gut. To every day, I look in the mirror and I'm like should I start an RAA? Should I join an RIA? Because I just only know how to be an advisor Right and coaching's hard, yeah, but I walk away from money all the time so that I can focus on what I'm doing, just like you guys do. So back to like where do you find them? It's, I don't think you do find them. I think you find people that find them.
Speaker 3:And CPAs are a good start because they have their tax returns and their financial statements. And the problem is, I'm not great at building relationships with CPAs. I'm good at pissing them off on the internet, and that's why Kevin's here, because Kevin is like dude CPAs are your friends. I'm like cool. Do you want to work for PCFO now? Because CPAs are your friends, I'm like cool. Do you want to work for PCFO now? Because you're smarter than me? And so CPAs are probably the number one because they are a different breed of human, but they're very good at being accurate. They're very good at I don't know. Yet I'm in the learning program of how these people brains, bodies work too, but they have all of the clients they have. If you guys want to sell million dollar premiums, cpas are going to shut it down or not. Even if it comes from an advisor you, you're your best advisor. I'd be surprised if they won't check with thomas and the cpa. Yeah, before the insurance goes through right.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so who, not how, and then and or any other way you know. And then the other side of it is the becoming $30 million families, which I'm particularly excited about because I don't know, do you guys know how many people with $30 million, like ultra high net worth, there are in actual numbers? No, yeah, so Google says like 100,000, 140,000, something. Who knows whether that's right or not, because a lot of people don't self-report if they own businesses or real estate or whatever. But let's just say there's probably. That's a lot. A hundred thousand is still kind of a lot of people, yeah, but but then think about this how many people how do you get $30 million?
Speaker 2:Usually I have to sell a business. Sell a business.
Speaker 3:Is there another way?
Speaker 1:There's a few ways I mean other than inheritance.
Speaker 3:Oh, you can inherit it or you could sell a business. What's another way? That's that that. What's another way?
Speaker 2:Marry.
Speaker 3:It's kind of like inheriting yeah.
Speaker 3:These are the main ones, I'd say, yeah, but okay, so I don't know. I don't want to work with someone who marries for money. That sounds like just like an evil person. Yeah, right, inheritance I don't really have a problem with that either, but something different about that immigrant hustle, you know, then, or that start from the bottom, versus, like we all know, people with trust funds, and some of them handle it really well Cause they have incredible emotional intelligence, yeah, and some of them just don't, against their own better judgment, they don't handle it well because it's tough to get a big, huge pile at a young age.
Speaker 3:And so the other way is, I believe, participating in the equity upside of a business. You don't have to be the founder, but you have to participate in profit share or equity or something, and you've seen every financial planner's business to evolve to say we serve entrepreneurs and equity-competited executives. Every single person says the exact same thing now, and five years ago, when I was waving the flag the iceberg, the iceberg, the iceberg. Everyone's like stupid boomers, boomers, I'm like, literally, look out your window. In your town, everyone that has money is an executive or an equity-compensated executive or a business owner, and the more equity they have and the more upside they have, the more probability they have of becoming that $30 million family. So that's the new PCFO blue ocean. That I see is everyone that you're serving right now as clients, that I'm serving right now as clients. I'm betting on jockeys and horses, and the closer they are, it's like cool.
Speaker 3:Give me someone with a $5 million net profit business that's 49, that's been doing it for 20 years. They probably are worth $30 million now Illiquid. But give me someone before that. Could they grow? And if they can grow, it's like at any stage of that cycle it's just like everyone starts as a newborn baby and at some point we'd make bad decisions or good decisions. So it's like how early do we want to go? How late do we want to go? But, um, you know it, finding people that already have a liquidity event and have already sold a business and already have $30 million, that's harder than the other side. But I think if you can just get anything from those people, even if you don't get them as a client, if you just learn from them and say, how did you do this, that knowledge is valuable to every other person behind them. Because I don't have $30 million family. If I met someone with a higher net worth than me that built it.
Speaker 3:I would have nothing but questions, sure, and then I would sell the answers to other people you know, yeah, yeah you know, or give them through the advice pad you know, like, because that knowledge and access and is I don't, I don't know how to build a 30 million dollar family as efficiently as other people have done it, so I would have questions and then that, um, but long story short is, I think that people that have money or will have money are everywhere and it's just looking in different places and looking under different rocks yeah, for sure, for sure.
Speaker 1:So I mean pcfo, like you guys have gone through a bunch of different evolutions. By the way that it sounds like your brain works, it's going to continue to happen a lot more. So I mean, what's the next three months, what's the next six months? Look like for you, because I'm not going to say a year, because I feel like it could change about two or three more times before the year's out Quarterly is like about the longest term time horizon that I can. Yeah, we're going to do quarterly.
Speaker 3:EOS is like a good program right. So three months obsessive focus is $30 million. Families cohort it's a live training cohort that we're doing I want to look back at the numbers. I think we have like 12 or 13 people into it, but that's our focus is like delivering on the value that we promised them building product building, sops, extracting intellectual property from Kevin's brain and body and soul and institutionalizing it into repeatable things that people can do and turning art into science. So that's my focus. That's why I'm not on linkedin. Doing anything is. I'm just like in my laboratory building stuff and, um, three months from then I'll probably be bored from not doing social media and I'll probably just try to do a bunch of cool, sweet videos, like you did brock which, by the way, those videos are freaking sweet. Like the video guy it's like brock's, like tom cruise or whatever. Like I, nothing is makes.
Speaker 3:I just want to like make sweet videos and like not even do my real job but the whole it's going back to pay bills and you know payroll and families and stuff. That's always you gotta pay for stuff. So and I haven't found I do, I don't know, do you get paid for your videos or is that just advertising?
Speaker 1:uh, no, it's just advertising.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's just advertising, but then you gotta sell stuff on the back, you gotta do the some work.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no for sure somewhere, but the thing that I like is, I mean, the videos can be polarizing, and you know, that's what I. If you don't like the videos, that's probably what I'm trying. This probably the emotion I'm trying to evoke. And if you do, like the videos, that's probably the emotion I'm trying to evoke. Um, so no, the videos are just fun for me. It's it's a good way to stay creative. I mean, I love doing that stuff in general, um, impressions, all kinds of stuff. So it's it's a good way for me to be able to kind of take advantage of that, the talent that I have, and apply it to what we actually do. So it's, it's the fun part.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's the fun part for sure, for sure, no, and it's, and it's awesome and it's, it's good from a branding and a culture perspective and so, like you guys know, like when you, when you build business before social media, it was different. Like cold calling sucks, like I don't, I don't really do. That's why I don't know what's going to happen in the future, because I don't know what opportunities. I don't even want to put this on camera, but since starting this $30 million families thing, I have had opportunities come out of just by even changing my tagline. I've had opportunities come out that are like stupid, I don't even know, but it's like I don't need any of them to work because we have the bread and butter stuff going, yeah, and community and coaching and consulting, even at a micro level, can pay the bills, which is fine. But who knows, it could be a totally different thing. It's all going to be within the same PCFO vision, sure, but the execution and implementation will change and evolve as opportunities arise.
Speaker 3:But short-term focus, $30 million families, building that as like level two, if you will, within PCFO world, and then helping all of our advisors implement and execute, because we operate on case studies, not just cash collect. We can collect money, but if we're collecting money at the expense of others, that's really bad for business. And if we're creating case studies and success stories, then that's like. All that I focus on basically is just creating success stories and case studies, because then everything else kind of takes care of itself. If you're doing good work, you're helping people, then they become your biggest fans. And I actually be interested, like from your guys' angle. What have you guys found to be the most successful or impactful way to be an insurance guy and have people love you and say, wow, we're like on the are, on the program, like we're, we're, we're with it and you're, you're killing it over there. And like we love insurance agents and we hate insurance agents. Like what in the world? Like how does that even work?
Speaker 1:Literally being the antithesis of the old insurance cold calling, whatever guy. I think that we just decided from the get-go we want to be ourselves, we want to throw the stuff out there that's going to ruffle some feathers, but also that people can appreciate and not be afraid to just tell it like it is. People have had good experiences with insurance in some cases and then in a lot of other ways. I mean people look nothing wrong with used car sales, but people look at the insurance industry right next to somebody selling you a car that's got problems with it right. And so I think for us just being completely transparent forward, not afraid to throw stuff out there, and you don't know how people are going to react to it, but if you get behind the message, it's what you truly believe. I've always found that that, to me, is what matters. I mean we just throw stuff out there that we think we actually believe at the end of the day. I mean it's dramatic and sometimes it's completely out there, but it's the way we actually feel about it.
Speaker 3:You guys both came from northwestern though, right, yeah, right, yep, so no offense to northwestern. But let's generalize for a second here. Yeah, um, they're a wonderful fortune 500 institution. That's mutual, whatever disclaimers, but sure, um, northwestern equals everyone gets the whole life insurance at their 24 years birthday, like, like, that's the brand For sure. At least younger people see, older people are like I don't know what you're talking about, but under 50, my high school buddy and college buddy is going to sell me whole life insurance, which sucks for Northwestern, because they're actually a great company. Their products are awesome, their insurance is awesome, I know, with really good wealth management practices there. But the public brand has been tainted by their machine of recruiting a bunch of people and just getting them to do new lives covered or whatever. But how did you guys unravel your belief system to what you believe now and how long did it take?
Speaker 1:uh, for peter a lot, a lot less time than it did me, yeah I'll tell you I mean share my beliefs.
Speaker 2:Um, you know like I was always like brock master, cold caller, I mean dude. You know they taught 10-3-1, grand them. For every 10 calls you make, you'd probably schedule about three meetings. One would become a client. You know rinse and repeat and my phrase to brock was always like how do we get the phone ringing the other way? How do we become a pharmacy where we have a bunch of doctors, financial planners who write a prescription for term life insurance and then their client calls us and says hey brock, hey p, hey Peter, I need a $1 million 30 year term. Can you help?
Speaker 1:Yeah, and then it's a matter of scaling that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I would say my big thing was I just became disenfranchised with the whole idea of everybody needs this, and every meeting that you had to come in and report your numbers felt like the same meeting. And when somebody got term insurance, it was all about creating a big warehouse of a $2 million term insurance policy so that every year someone can come in and convert $100,000 or $200,000 over to a permanent policy. And it was always premium premium premium to me. I just became so disenfranchised I didn't believe in it. I realized that I was doing something that I didn't believe in. Enter Peter we had stayed in touch and basically just decided that you know, we think that we can do something here. He told me about the concept of fee only that's how much I had my thoroughbred horse blinders on. I didn't even know that fee only existed and we just believed that we could do it. I mean, we uh, we really didn't know what we were doing.
Speaker 1:I was saying in the beginning I mean, it was an idea that we thought we had, um, but you know, through being able to watch what, actually, what the people that we do, uh, what we work with actually do, which we believe is true financial planning, it's been really cool to be able to be, you know, a solution, more tech forward and trying to do things that are a little bit different.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you just totally blew my mind with that pharmacy analogy, because we've all heard the doctor, you know, you know the butcher or the nutritionist kind of thing you know, but I've never heard of the pharmacy. Pharmacy, so the, so the planner is the family doctor yep, and you guys, that writes the, that sees the patients and and helps them with their stuff yep, empathizes with them and then synthesizes. You know what actually I would recommend. I would prescribe this as a part of your holistic health plan, right, and then Walgreens Walgreens or CVS, what's your preference? And then you guys are CVS, but it's like CVS on mine and it's easier.
Speaker 1:I think we'd like to be CVS. I like CVS.
Speaker 2:But no yeah.
Speaker 1:I mean as long as it makes sense, right. I mean, there's always the caveat.
Speaker 3:It's like you're not. If something needs a bandaid, you don't prescribe Vicodin, so like so at what point are you? Because you guys probably offer more, I would venture guess. There's fee only advisors that have zero training in insurance, Yep, and so you almost need to be the pharmacy slash insurance educator trainer. They're like how do you, how do you guys look?
Speaker 1:at yourself, I would say. Sometimes there are financial planners that we work with where the extent of their insurance knowledge might be what they learned in the CFP curriculum, right.
Speaker 1:Um yeah, which is pretty light, Right. But at the same time, the thing that I found is is oftentimes, but most all the time, they're very, very receptive to you. Know how do you guys go about it? And there's no perfect science to diagnosing a life insurance need either. Anybody that tells you that there is is lying to you, because you could have two people, two families, identical situations, and they could have millions of dollars in difference of death benefit. Right, and they could have millions of dollars in difference of death benefit. People will go by 10 times salary. People will go by debt, continuation of lifestyle, college education.
Speaker 1:But what about the person that wants to donate to charity? What about the person that has special needs situations to consider? I mean, it's never the same. So those people are always very willing to listen and the relationship's different. I mean, sometimes it's here's what they need, it's a 20, you know, it's a $1 million 20 year term, and sometimes it's they need life insurance. Would you guys mind helping them figure it out? So it depends on the relationship that we have with the advisor. Um, but, yeah, it's, it's.
Speaker 2:It's different, it depends, and some CVS and Walgreens have a dock in a box, right. So sometimes they're like, hey, I've got this ugly life insurance policy, can I 1035 it? So there's sometimes we have to give a little bit of expertise or a case study, right? Hey, this is what other fee only planners are doing. The situation comes up You're not alone, this is what others are doing this is what others are doing.
Speaker 1:There's not a right or wrong. I mean there's no right or wrong. It's just I always appreciate when people are, you know, transparent about. This is the way that I feel about it. Or, you know, I don't know a ton about this. Or help me understand the nuances of a disability policy or whatever it might be, because it's cool. I mean everybody's kind of an expert at their respective things and we appreciate the trust that people put in us to be able to work with people all over the country. It's been awesome.
Speaker 2:But hey, real quick.
Speaker 1:How can people follow along with what you're doing? Simon, I want to make sure that we get your info out here.
Speaker 3:Yeah, pcfoco slash webinar is probably the best, or just pcfoco. You can click to the webinar. Co slash webinar is probably the best, or just pcfoco. You can click to the webinar. There's uh, if you're a glutton for punishment and you want to watch me ramble about nonsense in a car for 70 hours, there's like a thousand hours of videos on linkedin. Uh, simon graner on linkedin and uh, or shoot me an email, simon at pcfoco, happy to answer a question, or you know just. You know, just, create dialogue. I'm not some, some guy that hides behind any, any type of computer platform although I am right now but happy to happy to take an email or a call at any time, almost about anything. Uh, because we live, we live in a very collaborative world, um, um, and I don't. I don't believe in competition, I believe in collaboration only. So with the right people at least.
Speaker 1:Definitely it's gotta be the right people man. Well, uh, appreciate the time.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, thanks for having me on guys. This is fun yeah.