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
#122 - Helping Clients Navigate Divorce with Jamie Lima
Jamie Lima returns to the Only Fee Only podcast to share how his firm has grown. As founder of Woodson Wealth Management and Allegiant Divorce Solutions, Jamie combines financial planning with divorce-focused advice to help clients navigate complex situations.
He offers mediation for peaceful splits and detailed analysis for cases involving pensions, retirement accounts, and other tricky assets. Jamie also uses short-form video on TikTok and social media to bring in new clients—sometimes over 100 a month.
His advice for new advisors: “If it’s not a ‘hell yes,’ it’s a no.” Follow Jamie on LinkedIn to learn how specialized planning can make a big difference.
Jamie's social:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamielima/
x: https://x.com/JamieMLima
music in this episode was obtained from Bensound
How's it going? Everyone, welcome back to the Only Fee Only podcast and, as always, thanks for being here. In this episode, we talked to Jamie Lima, who is the president of Woodson Wealth Management and he is also the founder planner and certified mediator at Allegiant Divorce Solutions. We get into a lot of that this time. You know what is it like when people are going through a divorce. How is he helping them, what kind of terms are they coming to, how are they amicably you know going through this transition together and how does he help them on the financial side. So, if anybody knows Jamie, they know he's an awesome guy and you know this is gonna be a great episode. So, if anybody knows Jamie, they know he's an awesome guy and you know this is going to be a great episode. So enjoy this episode with Jamie Lima 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 Travlo. I'm here with my co-host, brock Buckles, and today we're so excited to have Jamie Lima back on. Brock Buckles, and today we're so excited to have Jamie Lima back on. He is the founder of Woodson Wealth Management and really excited to hear just his overall experience in the industry his divorce, work being a firm owner and everything in between. So, jamie, welcome back to the show man.
Speaker 3:Man, I can't believe it's almost 100 episodes. I was on ago. I mean that's like crazy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, crazy, yeah, wild man. It's insane to see it. The podcast has been a lot of fun. I mean, people are like you know, I I feel like in the beginning, like people start a podcast, no one ever knows how long it's gonna go. So we're happy to look back and be like, hey, we're still rocking and rolling. We've had some awesome guests, you being one of them. But yeah, for anybody that wants to hear where Jamie was in 2022, go back to episode number 22. You can see what was going on as a prequel to this episode, man. But what's new, man? What's new in your world? What do you have going on? And what have the last few years been like, since the last time we talked?
Speaker 3:Yeah, we've been rocking and rolling over here, man. The firm's still doing well and I think we're in a really good position here from a wealth management perspective. When I met with you in 22, we were still like I mean, I was about a year and a half, maybe two years, into it at that point and just wondering whether or not this thing was going to be able to stand up on its own and survive. Frankly, because you know how those first couple of years are when you're building a practice. And now we're kind of I hate to say it because I don't want to jinx us, but we're kind of on cruise control in many ways and I have probably 60, 65 clients somewhere in that range.
Speaker 3:A good buddy of mine, al Faber, has joined the team about a year and a half, almost two years ago now. He has his clients that he works with. He has probably 120 clients or something that he's brought onto the firm just on his own. Over the course of the last year and a half or so it's been a wild ride, man. I started doing a little more of a focus on divorce, financial planning for helping people navigate the financial nuances of a divorce and again, I don't like to jinx myself and I hate vocalizing things like this because I'm always afraid that I'm always like maybe the planner in me is always waiting for the contingency component of this. But yeah, we've had some really really good early success with the divorce planning work and I think we have 50 cases going on right now and we're getting some pretty good traction with that. So it's been a lot going on since last we spoke.
Speaker 1:You got to speak it to existence, man, you got to speak it to existence.
Speaker 3:I'm trying to bring it into fruition. Right, I'm always one of those where it's like what if this goes south? What am I going to do? Do I have my plan B and C in place?
Speaker 2:Sure, I love it. Well, you want to share a little bit maybe about the CDFA designation and kind of why you have it, how it integrates into your work and why you're so passionate behind divorce work.
Speaker 3:Absolutely. I mean I'll take you back in the time machine a little bit.
Speaker 3:I mean I'm the product of a divorce, as many of us are, hopefully the two of you never had to experience it, but I did personally when I was probably seven or eight years old. My parents really they were amicable, and they went down to the courthouse and filled out the forms and $50 later they were divorced, if I get the story right, but they also really struggled. My dad was working multiple jobs to keep a roof over our heads and my mom struggled, working multiple jobs to keep food on the table, and they got married early, at 20 and 22, which a lot of people did in the 70s. Yeah, I would not recommend it. I would not recommend it at all, but there might've been doom from the start and what I realized, though and I don't know if I've ever shared this story with you guys or heard me say it in other podcasts and other social media channels, but one of the things that I remember distinctly about that time is one of my best friends growing up.
Speaker 3:His name is Rich and I mean we were like in diapers together, effectively, but I remember he and his mother came over and they dropped off a box of groceries for us to put into the pantry, and I even remember, at seven or eight years old, how heavy that was, and knowing that, like wow, if they didn't bring us food, we may not be able to eat today. Sure, and I felt even early on like I want to make sure that, if I ever have kids one of these days, that they never have to feel that same level of stress in their own lives, which, effectively, was what propelled me into the world of finance. I think in many ways.
Speaker 3:And understanding investments and managing money and budgeting and all the stuff that we teach our clients about. And then, unfortunately, I went through my own divorce in 2017, which, even as a financial planner, at 13, 14 years at that stage I realized, wow, I don't know a lot about the financial aspects of divorce and how to best manage those. And with the CDFA designation, had I had it then I probably would have maybe done some things differently. Sure, but hindsight is 20-20. And I've had that personal experience both as a young person and as an adult. And now my job is to help people ensure they don't step in the same landmines that I did along the way and try to sidestep any potential future problems.
Speaker 1:Yeah, man, it's interesting because my parents got divorced and it's such an interesting part of your life when that happens, you see it, and it changes so many things.
Speaker 1:My parents there was not a lot of financial animosity, but a lot of times like that's kind of part of it and that conversation has to happen. And when they're, when a divorce occurs, there's so much going on right, like emotionally it's so taxing, financially it can be taxing trying to figure out like who's living where, like what's you know, what's the visitation schedule If you have kids, like what's all that look like Right. And so in your job of doing that, man, when you're talking to people about, I mean, what are some of the common issues, uh, because I I don't think you can ever say, oh, we're gonna, let's make this divorce easy like those two terms are not synonymous but you you could say let's make it amicable or let's mediate this and help you guys both at least find peace somehow in this and make the transition in the next part of your lives as smooth as possible. So I know you're doing some of that now. What do those conversations look like for you when you're having those with your clients?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean on the mediation side, those cases, they work best when two people do just like you just said, which is, we want to remain amicable, we want to try to get this through this process as decently as we possibly can with one another. And, frankly, I won't even take a case where I know that there's going to be a lot of fighting and back and forth and so on, because it's not worth it. You're just spinning your wheels and wasting time. Yeah, but you're also right in that there are a lot of moving parts. Yeah, and when we go through and I don't have a copy of it in front of me, I can show you.
Speaker 3:But I mean, we have a 14-page outline of items that we have to try to get everybody through through the process of divorce In order to get an uncontested divorce in most states.
Speaker 3:We have to get you through those 14 pages and there's 20 or 25 different items that we have to all come to an agreement on in order for you to get an uncontested divorce in most states.
Speaker 3:Then we'll draft the documents and then you file with the courts and then you're done. It's everything from all of the low-hanging fruit that you just mentioned the visitation and some of the dividing up assets and so on, but it's also helping people figure out who's going to carry the kids' health insurance, how are we handling extracurricular activities, how are we budgeting for those things? There's a laundry list of other things that we go through, but ideally we help people go through that process and try to keep them out of the courts because it's going to keep more money in their pocket. Unfortunately, that's only about 15% of the cases. You know, most cases we come in an advocacy role and we we are on one side, you know, on that on one person's team, helping them through this process, because there's there's a lot to unpack man and there's a there's a lot that people have to consider.
Speaker 2:So how about on the advocacy side, on the 85% of cases, what are you preparing your clients for and how are you framing those conversations?
Speaker 3:It's very much like a traditional financial planning engagement. There are a lot of similarities. So, as a CFP as a lot of listeners are CFPs we all know that there's a process. We take them through, we gather the data, we analyze the data, we build a plan around said data, and so on. It's very much the same.
Speaker 3:So one of the first exercises we want to take people through is helping them define the goals that they have on the back end of the divorce. What do you want your future life to look like? Do you want to stay in the home? Are you going to travel more, or do we need to budget for kids' college savings or your future retirement plans or those types of things? And once we've defined those goals, then we start to gather the information from them. We look at four key things income, expenses, assets and liabilities and we'll organize that information and work with them to help them figure out like, okay, as we're going down this path and we're starting to think of who's going to get what, so to speak.
Speaker 3:What are the things that we want to fight for, what are the things we're okay giving up, and how do those decisions impact you over the next 5, 10, 20 years of your life. So there's the. I tell people all the time like there's kind of this, like we're helping you in the here and now with the decisions you have to make today relative to the divorce, but we're also putting on our future financial planning CFP hats and helping you figure out how those decisions are going to impact you onto the future. And I think melding those two roles together puts us in a unique position to be able to help a lot of people and put them on a pretty solid path going forward.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. So I mean, would you be able to give it? And I don't want you to get as specific as you want.
Speaker 1:obviously you're not going to disclose names here right but what is an example of one of the situations that you were kind of looking at and the way that you were able to kind of help someone through something, Just to give it like a kind of a feel of practicality here for the listeners of. Like you know, we're talking a little bit like general right now. Are there any specific examples or things that you've seen that maybe apply to more than one? So we're not singling anybody out here.
Speaker 3:Absolutely, absolutely. As you were asking that question, I can think of probably five or six different cases, but the most common that we see is number one not understanding the real after-tax value of the assets that you own. Everyone thinks not everyone. Most people think, especially attorneys. They think that a $500,000 401k is equivalent to $500,000 in equity in your home Right yeah. And they don't understand the concept of capital gains versus ordinary income and early withdrawal penalties and so on, and so, right yeah, you've got to understand the tax implications of some of these transactions.
Speaker 3:And if you keep the 401k and you need money right now to live because you've got to furnish your new apartment, or you've got to want to keep the kids in the private school that they're in, and so on, and you need to take money out of those retirement assets, you're killing yourself from a tax perspective. So what else can we do? Are there other assets that are at play that we can help strategize on the tax side at play, that we can help strategize on the tax side? And you guys wouldn't believe how many people we come across that still have pensions. On the wealth management side, we work with a lot of people that are in the 30 to 55 year, 30 to 50 age range, right Dudes like us, right Just in the middle, and I don't know very many people my age that have a pension these days.
Speaker 3:But for some reason we come across a lot of people on the divorce side that do they're former government or they're current government, or they're in the military or whatever it is. They think it's just a simple back of the napkin calculation and no one understands the time value of money calculations, the cost of living adjustments, interest rates, actuarial tables and all that other stuff. So we see that happen a lot and I think those are the two where I feel like we drive the most value to these engagements, because if you do the math wrong, then you can be giving up future cash flow and my earlier example you can be leaving a lot of money on the table or giving a lot of money to the IRS that you don't need to give.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's so interesting man Just looking at it, for how an attorney might look at something versus how a financial planner looks at something, and that's why you want to be really good at what you're good at and then defer to the experts when it comes to other stuff, because otherwise you're missing stuff.
Speaker 3:Everyone thinks that their attorney can handle it all. Yeah, everyone Like, oh well, they're going to file the forms, they're going to do this thing, they're going to do that thing. I've seen attorneys make mistakes In every state. Before you go to court or before you have a hearing or you go to mediation and these major milestones along the way you usually have to fill out financial affidavits, so you give the courts basically an updated snapshot of your balance sheet and your income and expenses. Yeah, I've seen mistake after mistake on those documents from attorneys and they're filing these documents with the courts under the penalty of perjury if you're falsifying these documents. And some people are signing documents that have totally incorrect information and they're basically saying that it's the, that is truth, it's, it's, it's scary.
Speaker 1:Yeah, jeez.
Speaker 2:Yeah, those have to be some interesting conversations and a lot of cooks in the same kitchen, I'm sure. But one thing I definitely want to highlight. I mean there's no doubt. I mean the value you provide compared to what your clients are getting out is huge. And I think one thing that I've really seen you work on is short form video and getting your message out. When I think of Jamie Lima, I think a short form video now You've been crushing it. I mean, what are some tips there? How have you seen it help your business and what has that really done on the front end of the funnel and just having good conversations and bringing the right people in.
Speaker 3:It's a great question. I appreciate that. I um, I appreciate the feedback because I I think I suck at that stuff, but we're here to affirm that you do not okay, all right good all right I appreciate it, thank
Speaker 3:you everybody appreciate that, my I, I appreciate that feedback, but, um, I think the one thing that I did early on when I was starting to do the video, the work in video, is I just overthought it, right, like I just I was just overthinking, as we usually do as humans at least us type A's I overthought it, overthink, and really it was just you just have to pick up the phone or grab your camera and just talk, yeah, because there's probably 15 things we've talked about in this 10 minutes we've had on the podcast so far. That is 15 minutes worth of video content, yeah. And so sometimes I'm just in, I'm in meetings and I'm just sitting down just having a conversation like this and I'm like that's a really good conversation. I should, I should bring that up and if you, just if you, if you come at it from the perspective of how can you take the information that you're gleaning from the conversations that you're having on a daily basis and help other people, you know, hear what you have to say about it, I think it's it's it's kind of easy and and it's really done a we're, we're, we're definitely getting traction.
Speaker 3:You know, we're probably picking up, like I mentioned, you know, in the lead up to our call here today. Last year we were getting somewhere between 100 and 120 prospects a month coming through the door. Yeah, just on the divorce side, and and that was with and I've, so I've started to run some Facebook ads and we've created a really pretty good funnel. That seems to be working. Again, don't want to jinx myself, but, um, it's, it seems to be working. And I think short form content, wherever you can put it out, you know Tik TOK lately it's been crazy.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And you know you don't have to do like you don't have to. You know, do a funny jig or like dance or sing or whatever it is that you know we thought TikTok was all about. Early on, yeah, I was like I'm never going to go on TikTok because I can't dance. And now I'm like this is like it's the place to be.
Speaker 1:It used to be synonymous with, like 14 year old dancing. Like that's what people thought. You're like why would I ever get on an app where kids are just dancing? Like I'm not, there's going to be? No, you know what I mean. Like I have a younger brother and sister and they're always like we're doing TikTok dances and I'm like what are you talking about? Like I'm not getting on this app at all. And then I feel like through COVID, a lot of people found out what it is and then people started getting into it and kind of finding the power that it is and the algorithms and the amount of people that you can reach. So it turned out to be a really great thing. Now for me personally, we work with the only financial planners, so I don't know what's my best platform, but if you can work with anybody that's going through a particular life event, it's a great platform.
Speaker 3:I think so too. I mean, if you just have to get out in front of the right people and some of this you have to test out. Yeah, it took us two years to figure out how to get our and even just recently, facebook has made changes to their algorithm. We're now in this protected category called a personal hardship. So we went from 100 to 120 prospects a month down to I think last month it was only 50. It's still a good number, but it's a significant blow and, frankly, just put this out there, it's Facebook's way of making you spend more money. So we're trying out different avenues this month and next month to see what's going to work, and a lot of it's just test, iterate, test, iterate and you'll eventually find your, find your groove.
Speaker 1:You hear that, zuckerberg, we're onto you, man, we know what you're doing, we know yeah, I know it's crazy, man, they're charging. It is we could. That's a whole different podcast. Jamie, that's the next time you come on.
Speaker 1:We'll get into that stuff, but for all right. So like man, you, you've been in the financial industry for 20 plus years, right, like you've done a bunch of different things. You've had your firm Last time we talked, and we always like to lead the listeners with something like what is something for someone that wants to start, or they're in their first year after you've learned everything even from the last time we talked to. Now, what's the one thing that you would tell people just to help them out? Can we cuss on this show?
Speaker 3:Yeah, man, if it's not a fuck, yeah, it's a hell. No, there you go, there you go, and where I'm going with that is that, and we probably talked about this on the earlier podcast, but I felt like so many people have their hand in your pocket. When you're launching a firm, yeah, you have this marketing guru, you have this association, you have this, you need a bookkeeper, you need an attorney, you need Everybody is going to come knocking, yeah. So if you're in the first year or so of launching your firm, if it's not a fuck, yeah, it's a hell, no, yeah, because and you just have to, like, keep that mantra in mind and I I've learned to say no over the course last couple years a hell of a lot more than I've said yes, and it's kind of liberating yeah, yeah no, it is man well, because everybody wants a piece of your time.
Speaker 1:everybody wants like, once they see what you're doing, like the amount of messages that you get with people that can help you, or 10x, or they just want to grab a coffee, or they want to network or they want. It's like if you say yes to every one of those people, congratulations, because that's what you spent your time doing in business. Because you're not going to be in business for very long, you're just not.
Speaker 3:And I get when we I've been on a couple of podcasts I was on a couple of podcasts previously and with some different associations and whatnot and there've been people that reach out and like I don't mind giving my time for somebody.
Speaker 3:That's like, hey, I have these questions and I really struggle in this area, like that's cool. But going back to platforms and what's working, what's not, I haven't been paying all that much attention to LinkedIn these days Because if you, I can't keep up with the DMs of people trying to sell me something or do lead gen for me. It's just like whoa, this is getting weird here, yeah, so you've got to be careful for that. If you get bogged down and trying to help everybody and everybody's got their hand out and you're like you you think it's going to be the next thing that's going to take you to the next level. I fell into that trap too. You know I've, I've, I've wasted, you know, tens of thousands of dollars on people that you know helping with my marketing or whatever, and and you get nothing out of it for the most part.
Speaker 1:So you've just got to be very careful at the end of the day, like you said, man, like if you can get a decent mic, you can get an. If you have an iphone and you've got something to set it up on, like with a, with a less than a hundred dollar setup, honestly, or if you want to, if you wanted to sound really good, two to three hundred dollars set up, you can do it and you can get on a video editing software and get pretty decent with ai. It does most of it for you and, honestly, don't try to time it, don't try to understand it too much, because some of the stuff that I thought was going to absolutely kill it, no one cared about it, and then some of the stuff that I was like I just had to throw something up, because that's what I do every day did extremely well, 100% Going back to my comment about the pensions.
Speaker 3:Well, 100% Going back to my comment about the pensions, my most popular video on TikTok, which I think it were like 300, 400,000 views or something on it, was the damn pension one. Yeah, never would in a million years would have guessed that TikTokers wanted to understand about dividing up a pension and retirement.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you could pay me as much money as you wanted to. Dividing up a pension and retirement yeah, you could pay me as much money as you wanted to, and I would never guess that that would happen.
Speaker 2:For sure, for sure.
Speaker 1:Go ahead Pete.
Speaker 2:How about, just before we go, what have been like the best things you've spent money on in the last few years in marketing, because I feel like you just have really tested a lot of stuff In marketing or in general.
Speaker 3:In general, best investment I ever made and I was extremely nervous about this was hiring an assistant.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:When I got to about 50 households 40 to 50 households I realized I was starting to spend more time working in the business than working on it. Yeah, and I was getting spread a little bit thin because we were doing real financial planning here, right, and in my old days, at my old firm, I had 450 clients and it was like an assembly line Just get them in, get them out, let them drink the free coffee and sell them something and move on. That is not the type of work we do here, and to have that many households and do real good work, I needed help and so I hired a gal. Her name is Sierra and that was probably shortly after we had that podcast. I hired her and she came on board just as like an operations person helping me, you know, open accounts, do transfers, appointment confirmations, meeting agendas, those types of easy things.
Speaker 3:And now over the course of the last three years, she's effectively become my right hand woman. You know, she's our operations manager. She's helped create a standard operating procedures manual and she does, she does everything and in a lot of ways, saves me from myself. Yep, and had I not made the investment in her, which again was scary because you're like wow, I got to pay somebody a whopping $40,000 a year, and this is more part-time for her too, by the way. Sure, I'm not that cheap listeners.
Speaker 1:I'm not that guy. Jamie says yeah.
Speaker 3:I'm not paying her less than minimum wage on purpose. This is a part-time gig for her, for the most part, sure, and it's an amazing setup. She has the opportunity to put her kids on the school bus in the morning, take them off at the end of the day. She has a couple hours to work in the daytime, maybe an hour or so at night if she chooses to. I don't micromanage her time at all and she just comes and goes as she pleases, and it's been the best experience ever, and I couldn't have launched the divorce planning business without her either, because now she's doing work for me there, paying her more there too. So don't worry people work for me there paying her more there too.
Speaker 3:So don't worry people, I'm like this is not a sweatshop and she helps with like data entry and analysis and all the other appointment confirms and she's sitting in on appointments and doing all the things that I couldn't do by myself. So if you're at that stage where you're like scrambling and spinning you feel like you're spinning your wheels and maybe some things are slipping through the cracks my advice would be you know, my advice to everybody would be hire early because you can figure it out later.
Speaker 2:For sure, for sure.
Speaker 1:Well, jamie man, great advice. It's always refreshing to talk to you. You always have a great perspective and a lot of awesome things to say. Um, so if you're listening to this podcast, you had to be able to take away some stuff from that. If people want to follow along with what you're doing, man, where can they follow along? Where's the best place to follow along?
Speaker 3:I would say LinkedIn, but we've already talked about that. I think if all of our social media channels are up, LinkedIn is a great place. I know you guys do a lot of work there and this will be posted there as well. So hit me up on LinkedIn If you do need help. I'm always I am always happy to help. Just don't send me lead gen request, you know marketing request.
Speaker 1:I'll probably just ignore that LinkedIn's amazing.
Speaker 3:All my social media stuff is up there. So if you guys want to follow and follow me there, that.