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
#113 - Matt Pruitt on Balancing Growth with Personal Fulfillment
Matt Pruitt, founder of Exhale Wealth Management, is back for his second appearance on the podcast, and his journey continues to impress. After leaving institutional investment management, Matt built a firm that’s thriving by serving tech workers with equity compensation. His business has seen remarkable growth in a short time, a testament to the power of a clear niche and strategic focus.
In this episode, Matt dives into what’s driving his success—focusing on the right clients, leveraging a strong referral network, and outsourcing to stay efficient. He also shares the value he’s found in collaborating with peers and learning from groups like the XY Planning Network.
Beyond the numbers, Matt talks about how he manages his time effectively to prevent burnout and balance running a growing business with family life. His approach is practical and grounded, offering insights that advisors at any stage can learn from.
Tune in to hear Matt’s story and gain valuable takeaways for building your own practice.
Matt's Social:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/matt-pruitt-cfp%C2%AE-cfa-02aab548/
Music in this episode was obtained from Bensound.
How's it going everyone? Welcome back. This is the only, the only podcast. As always, we appreciate everyone taking the time to listen. In this episode, we talked to Matt Pruitt, who is the founder of Exhale Wealth Management, based out of Minnesota. He's an absolute awesome guy and we always enjoy the time getting to hang out with him and learning a little bit more about what he's got going on. We've known Matt for several years now and have had him on the podcast before, so this is an update. If you haven't heard the first one, we talk a little bit about that one, so make sure you give it a listen Without further ado. This is Matt Pruitt, round two on the Only Fee Only podcast.
Speaker 3: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 excited to be here, man Fun guest today.
Speaker 3:Likewise Very excited to have Matt Pruitt on from Exhale Wealth. He was on previously, but very excited to hear how much growth he's had and what the future looks like. So, matt, welcome to the show.
Speaker 2:Peter Barak. Great to see you guys, as always.
Speaker 3:Likewise, I know we're fresh off XYPN Live in your home state, so it's great to see you then and catch up. But for those who don't know who Matt Pruitt is, you want to give a quick overview of who you are and a little bit about your firm yeah, for sure, and I'll try to not duplicate too much.
Speaker 2:You guys were kind enough to have me on earlier in the career trajectory, but I'm based out of Minneapolis. I got a wife, two kids, two dogs all girls, so just me and a bunch of estrogen in the household. I started my firm July of 2022, had a brief stint at Ameriprise for just under a year before that and I was kind of a career changer, or shifter, if you would, from institutional investment management investment banking. It's been, you know, I work with tech workers with equity compensation, very, you know, planning focused uh, practice right now, or I guess I've worked to this date with 55 clients, um, four of those have fallen off for whatever reason, uh, and so I'm currently working with 51 clients. Um, yeah, I happy.
Speaker 2:You know, I always hope people share numbers when they're on this podcast, and so I'm going to lead by example and did a lot of this at XYPN, you know, talk through business planning and just to give people some context though, just shy of 300,000 of revenue and costs for me, around 55 to 60,000, about half of that is related to my virtual assistant, and all that is very top of mind for me right now, coming off of XYPN and doing a bunch of business planning and I love you know. It's been a joy talking to other advisors about where they're at and how they're, you know, bridging from one place to the next.
Speaker 1:Yeah, man, well said, and yeah, no. That was a good, concise answer. If you guys want to know more about where he was at, I would encourage you to listen to episode number 45, because I think that'd be a great car ride. Right? That's 50 minutes of somebody about two years in between the two episodes maybe a year and a half, so check out episode 45. But I mean a lot of big changes, man. I mean you've had a lot of client growth, you've increased your fees, new tech add-ons, you have a virtual assistant. I mean what have been some of the drivers in some of those things?
Speaker 2:And how has that changed your practice?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's been a continual effort to balance client growth and a high level of service, all the while obviously trying to like Just personally, I have three goals, right Of increase, increased take home pay, maintain balance on the home front and then take pride in the product or service I'm delivering to clients.
Speaker 2:And so those are always the three things I have on a daily basis in the back of my head. The easiest one to measure is client growth and revenue, but those other two are always there and kind of like forcing mechanisms of am I making the right decision? So as you obviously add more clients, it becomes tougher to balance, especially the time home thing and not being too stressed. So that has been kind of the goal and that's also been part of you know, kind of continually increasing fees for new clients, to actually slow down the new client acceptance rate, if you would, and increase the average fee per client. So I have still been adding, you know, a lot of clients on an annual basis but I've intentionally been slowing that down a little bit and working towards a higher average revenue per client with the goal of ultimately like growing forward at around like a $10,000 per client goal.
Speaker 1:Nice.
Speaker 3:Very cool. So 55 families that you've worked with, 51 currently. At what point were you like holy cow, I'm busy. You know I might need more support, I might need systems. You know you're like holy cow. Now we're a business.
Speaker 2:Day one. It's all about how many clients you're bringing on, and for me, that number has always been really high. So if I still, to this day, have never really had a steady state where I'm oh, I'm just gonna kick back for six months and bring on like two clients, it's always been pretty rapid fire and the amount of work you put in the first six months of relationship is always very high. So it's, it's. It's kind of felt like I've been swimming upstream this whole time. With that said, I have gotten better about, about balancing. This last summer was awesome. I feel like I actually did a really good job about taking pretty much every Friday off and, uh, working on the golf game. The handicap does not reflect it, but uh, but um, but yeah, it's it has. You know, it's been very busy the whole time.
Speaker 2:But as I have you know, I would say getting past 35 to 40 clients was a really big inflection point and I've tried really hard, not just tried it, I do use kind of the surge model and that's always the wake up call of all right, no, however many clients I have, I'm going to try and get those meetings in about a six week period, maybe less. And I hear these podcasts, people do like four or five meetings a day. For me, if I get over 10 meetings per week right now is kind of where I find that breaking point. And at the 35 to 40 clients is when I think I reached out and hired a virtual assistant and that's kind of been. It has helped. But now, like passing 50, I'm kind of looking at okay, I think I probably need someone full time. But yeah, 35 to 40 clients I think is for me looking at just the impact it has on that.
Speaker 1:Surge schedule was the inflection point for me just being a true solo. Yeah, yeah, I mean, I think a lot of people, when they're hiring two men, all those are really good points, but a lot of people think to themselves I'm busy, I think maybe I could use a VA. What do I have the VA do that Like, what am I doing? And then what? What is the VA doing? As every you go through that Kind of like that push and tug.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and hiring a virtual assistant has, hands down, been the best decision I've made to date. It just, you know, tech stack, peer groups, whatever, push it off to the side. Hire a virtual assistant hands down. And I'm also super glad that I hired a virtual assistant and not a full-time employee. To start, I took some advice from a lot of people at last year's XYPN Live and they said just go work with Nifty Advisors. They're a virtual assistant group that just works with other advisors. The feedback I got was they're going to be top of market pricing. I think they started around $65 per hour when you could definitely just go find someone on the internet US-based for like $30 or $35 per hour and let could definitely just go find someone on the internet US based for like 30 or 35 per hour and let alone like in the Philippines or something for like however much $10 per hour. But the feedback I got, which was really helpful, was just go hire Nifty. They're.
Speaker 2:You know my virtual assistant. She works with five or six other advisors. She knows what she's doing. I can ask her like hey, what are you doing for other advisors? So she's very much a team member value add. And then the best part about that has been no-transcript.
Speaker 2:So I look at it, I always kind of put my money where my mouth is as a forcing mechanism and I kind of commit to say, all right, I'm right now I think I'm spending a little over $2,000 per month. I'm at let's see what is it 30 hours per month, so a little under 10 hours per week. I started at 20 hours per month and that doesn't sound like very much. But when you're doing everything on your own, and especially like in a planning focused practice, everything is, you know, customized. You know no one knows your client like you do.
Speaker 2:So it's hard to kind of outsource some of this stuff to a virtual assistant, especially if you struggle with letting go of things like I do. So I look at that as all right. I'm spending X amount on a virtual assistant. Do I want to waste this money or do I want to make good use of that money? And we meet every Monday and go through what she's going to do for me that week and that is you know, I know I'm going to meet with her at noon on Mondays and usually we have one other checkup throughout the week, but I know I'm going to meet with her on noon at Mondays. I better have a list of things for her to do that week, otherwise it's going to be a waste of money. And that's little bit more, so that she can step into my mind and prep 80 of my client meetings.
Speaker 3:I don't know if I'm at 80, yeah, but a large chunk right, uh, to make a lot of them. Yeah, yep, okay, so working 10 hours a week, you said right uh, the virtual assistant, yeah, yep all right, um, so that's, and then your budget on it's around 2000.
Speaker 3:So yeah, that's very so. But, like, what was the hesitation at first? Were you, like you know, were you doing any math on how many new clients you would need to bring on, or what's kind of like your train of thought around the virtual assistant? Because some people are like, oh, but I could still do it myself.
Speaker 2:I just viewed it as a necessary I don't want to use the word necessary evil, but like it is necessary to grow and I realized like I could definitely take on another five or 10 clients at that point, but I'm going to grind myself into the ground and I'm going to hit a wall faster. Whereas also the beauty of a virtual assistant is you can increase your hours with them. So it's been kind of this gradual growth in hours and, doing the math, I'm kind of like getting to the point where, all right, it's not going to be that far off of the cost of a full-time hire. Um, my biggest hesitation right now for a full-time hire is the same hesitation I had hiring a virtual assistant, like what are they going to do for me? So, um, but you know I'm getting more comfortable with that concept.
Speaker 2:so, um, yeah, the hesitation, though is the cost for me wasn't too big of a concern. Yes, it was, and is still, my biggest line item, um, in my budget, but it was more of how am I going to use them? Is this going to actually be productive or a time suck? Um, and that's a challenge you just kind of need to embrace um and force yourself to be better and not just ask them to do random things, but actually ask them to do repeatable things that can add value to your practice.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's such a good point, and one of the things that I always heard was make videos for VAs right, like if there's something that they're going to be doing over and, over and over again, make a video that way. If they were like how did Matt say that? I do this, they just watch the video. Right, you can literally duplicate where you are, just by creating systems and having them work within those systems. So I think that's really cool, and instead of calling it a necessary evil, we'll call it a necessary springboard for growth.
Speaker 1:That's the way we're going to coin it.
Speaker 2:That's a sales guy, Brock, oh man.
Speaker 1:Well, thank you, I guess. Oh, man, well thank you, I guess. So, going back, man, looking at this, and one of the things that I always thought was cool about your practice especially as we've been able to keep in touch for the last few years, is you've never had that thing where it's like where am I getting more clients? Getting clients has never been a problem for you, but one of the things that I think, especially with the planners that we see and work with, that grow quickly, is the right clients, right. So making sure that we're growing the right way, we're staying within our niche, we're working with the right people, we're saying yes to the right opportunities, we're saying no to the wrong opportunities, and XY is very generous with that right All the time in the Facebook group. Check out this client. But how are you now going about making sure you're working with the right people, moving forward?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I spend a lot of time that doesn't go anywhere on prospect calls and I refer people out all the time. Shout out to Abundo Wealth here in Minneapolis. If someone doesn't have the necessary amount of complexity that I think like warrants paying my fee, then almost always refer to a bundle. I send a lot of people their way and if they're not a good personal fit or they're kind of retiree, I've got a network of other people to send them to if they're a business owner. It's taken me time but I've really built out my network of other advisors I refer to. And also we talked about inflection points hitting. Hitting that 30 to 35 client level was, I think, when I started to get the confidence like, hey, I can say no to people and it's going to be okay. And I'm super thankful that I have done that along the way, because when I look at outsourcing work to my virtual assistant, one of the things with fall search meetings is we go through their paycheck and we look at where they are with their 401k contributions, megaworth 401k, employee stock plan contributions, hsa contributions and then do a tax projection using their year to date earnings, extrapolate that and then plug it in the holistic plan and spit out a tax projection. If all my clients work for public tech firms, it's pretty easy for me to create documentation for my virtual assistant to do the wide majority of that work. But if they're at different types of companies, if they're business owners, retirees, then like business owners, retirees that's just not going to work. That's a completely different planning topic. So I think I have done a pretty good job at staying dialed into the niche and that is definitely starting to pay dividends when it comes to scaling and outsourcing work.
Speaker 2:But I guess, on the referral thing, yeah, I guess just say no. I need to do a better job at preventing, protecting my time, I think. But I do just say no a lot and it's funny, I still. Almost all my growth is client. Um, I have had a lot more people jumping on my calendar that find me on the internet somehow and like eight times out of 10, that's just not a good fit. Maybe they have the right situation, but the personal fit is such a big thing for me as well and those are harder to say no to and those are the clients that end up being more taxing on you when you're prepping for meetings or kind of dreading it. So I don't have the perfect system yet, but there is a huge premium to work with client referrals because you know they're going to be great people and fit your kind of client profile.
Speaker 3:I mean rinse and repeat, right. And you also, it's predictable, you understand what they're going through. You speak the same language. So I mean mean there's a lot that goes on with it. But I mean I have recognized you are very good at networking and I mean you always talk about different peer groups. What's that been like with your trajectory of building your firm? You know x, y, p, n. You have your starting launch group.
Speaker 2:You know, where are you at?
Speaker 3:today, and where are you learning all this information that you get?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean peer groups are really important especially, you know, working from a home office gets a little lonely out there. I try to stay plugged in on a number of fronts and it's definitely shifted over time. Right, you know we started with our launchers group through XYPN. Still keep in touch. You know that group has petered out a little bit. One of the group members, Kevin Estes, still runs a super group where he brings in different people to talk. So try to jump into that every once in a while.
Speaker 2:But just naturally with a launching group everyone's going to go in very different directions from clientele.
Speaker 2:They work with pace, fee models and some people might hang up the cleats completely, others might just be like, hey, I'm not growing anymore, others are like I'm going to the moon.
Speaker 2:So I do think it's important to kind of reassess you know annually of who am I networking with this year that's going to make a positive impact on on me and try to find people that have a similar growth trajectory, if nothing else, to keep each other motivated. So you know I have a group of local advisors here in Minneapolis that I meet with. A lot of them are more established in their practice and that is awesome for me to be able to look up to people and see you know what are you doing four or five years ahead of me, that I should be aspiring to, and um, and then have a group of other advisors uh, that you know a lot of them are met at XYPN last year, um that are at very similar growth stages and have similar growth aspirations. That we meet and talk more about annual and quarterly goals, which is super helpful, um, but then, yeah, I just, you know, like to network with people and hear what people are doing. That's that's working, and I do.
Speaker 2:I definitely do still keep in touch with a few people from the original group and, early on and periodically hop on the phone and be like hey, you know, I just brought on this piece of tech, or have this client situation. Have you done this and how would you approach it?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, and I think it's so important to be around people that are in a spot that you might want to be in in the future, right, it's like maybe you don't want their exact life, maybe you don't want their exact practice, but you could take lessons and put the old Pruitt spin on it, right?
Speaker 1:And then next thing, you know it's going to be a lot more applicable to what you're doing and the way that you want to live the way that you want to. You know, focus on balance in your life. And then you know some of the things you probably see people doing. You're like and I don't want that, right, like I don't want to be that busy, I don't want to not have the balance in my life. So talk about that and I know you mentioned it ideas that people start with when they start to practice and that being like I'm doing X amount of time with family, I'm only working this many hours, and then all of a sudden it's like uh-oh, like now I'm finding myself swimming a little bit, like how have you been able to to still stick with that family time and keep that balance?
Speaker 2:yeah, um, I'd be laughing if I didn't say if my wife didn't come in like last night and be like like working at 10 pm. You know, like I thought if we were done with this, just like partially in jest, but she also gets. It is literally like the seventh inning of surge for me right now. So it's a busy time, um, but it is from a balanced perspective. My personal goals are every morning be available and engaged from like 6 30, and that 6 30 am usually when the kids wake up, get them off to school and daycare, come back, you know, at my desk or doing whatever by 8 15, 8, 30 and then be done at 5 15 pm dinner. Kids come home around then and get through bedtime and then non-surge times. Hopefully I'm just done at 5 15, right, uh, and surge times usually log on monday through thursday for another hour or two in the evening to get things kind of buttoned up.
Speaker 2:Try, try really hard not to work on the weekends. If I do, it's for an hour or two during nap time on the weekends for the kids. And then you know I have intentionally been tracking this year days off outside of weekends and holidays and not really to like pull a jar or something like I want to take 100 days off, but just, it is something that's measurable to be like. You know, am I taking time off and is it healthy? And I think I'm going to be around 36 days for the year, this year, on top of weekends and holidays, which I'm pretty happy with.
Speaker 2:But, yeah, it's, the surge thing is a constant talk. When I talk about this with my wife, a lot too of you know it's very much like my business is very intertwined with our family dynamic and we've kind of been talking like is it really worth it with a family with two kids to have three months of the year, you know, six weeks twice a year where you're this busy and stressed? Um, and you know, I am kind of leaning towards still sticking with the surge model, maybe spreading it out a little bit more. And and I think I've realized in those last year, I really appreciate the 30 to 35 hour consistent weeks versus complete days or weeks off followed by the complete like chaos time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, and part of that's my, like, my fault, just being a solo advisor, it's really hard to smooth things out right, because you don't have the staff to help you during those busy times to smooth that out. So maybe that'll change as I do hire people. But, um, for now I think I'm going to be a little more measured in how I roll out my search meetings going forward and kind of try to space them out a little bit, uh, more than what I've done in the past.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, that makes total sense.
Speaker 1:I mean, at the end of the day, man, it's about balance, right, and the people that you're working with, really what they care about is that you have an eye on what they have going on and they're kind of going to lead wherever you.
Speaker 1:They're going to follow wherever you're leading, right. So if you say, hey, this year let's mix it up a little bit different, like I know personally my financial advisor, I'm they're just kind of like, get on our calendar this quarter, and I'm like, okay, I'll find a slot. Like I feel like from the other side, it's not nearly as involved as what you have to think about as the practice owner, as the business owner, as the person that's keeping it all together, um, but I think that's all really good advice, man, um. One last question If you could give one piece of advice to an advisor that's just getting ready to hop in, right, they're just getting ready to start their firm, they're waiting on that final registration. It comes through, so they're registered in the state that they're going to start out with, what would you tell that person?
Speaker 2:I'd have to look back and see what I said the last time. It might be the exact same thing, which has always been my. My approach is find a problem, solve the problem and market your solution to that problem. It's as simple as that and ideally, the people that have those problems will have either high income or high assets, but if not, there's still ways to build a profitable business. But that's how I really got my launching board was looking at these benefits that certain tech employees have and realizing that they weren't receiving the level of attention or advice that they should be receiving on those types of things and really just marketing the crap out of myself to be like hey, like I'm uniquely, my practice is uniquely built to help you.
Speaker 2:You know tech worker with ESPPs, rsus and Omega Roth 401k, and so it obviously doesn't need to be that, but that's how I built my practice and I think you could do that with tons of different clients and even if you're navigating like what's my niche going to be, you can still have the message for prospective clients of hey, I see this problem all the time, I have a unique solution for it and I'm perfectly equipped to serve a lot more clients just like you that have these same problems. And you can give that same message to three or four different niches, just because it doesn't have to match what your website says in order to provide value and market that value.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely man.
Speaker 3:Go ahead, petey. Yeah, sorry my Wi Fi is a little slow, but Matt thanks so much for coming on today. For those who want to follow along, what's the best way that people can follow the Excel wealth story?
Speaker 2:Probably LinkedIn still my OG social media platform. Try to stay off of the others for the most part, but I am fairly active, try to post once a week and engage here and there on LinkedIn. So you can find me on LinkedIn Matt Pruitt, xsail Wealth Management.
Speaker 1:Love it, man. Well, thank you so much for the time. Always great to get the chance to talk to you, man, and look forward to having you on a third time and see how it's gone from there. So, thanks a lot, man. All right, we'll check in.