What Happens If Your Advisor Isn’t There Tomorrow?

What happens to a financial plan when it depends on just one person?

In the first episode of The EmVision Perspective, we sit down with Steve Frank, a veteran advisor with decades of experience helping families, individuals, and business owners navigate important financial decisions. Steve shares how conversations with clients led him to think differently about continuity, succession, and the importance of building a team that can support clients through multiple generations.

Throughout the discussion, Steve and the EmVision team explore topics including:

• Why trust is earned through relationships and consistent service
• The evolution of the advisor-client relationship
• The value of collaboration and thoughtful planning
• Building continuity for families and future generations
• The role of team-based support in serving clients effectively
• Creating a planning experience that adapts through life's transitions

This episode is less about markets and investments and more about the people, relationships, and values that help create meaningful planning conversations.

To learn more about EmVision Capital Advisors or to start a conversation with the team, visit EmVision Capital Advisors.

Transcript

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What would happen to your financial plan and goals if the person or team you trusted wasn't there tomorrow? Managing wealth is about more than just numbers. It's about the life those numbers allow you to lead. Welcome to the envision perspective, where we bridge the gap of human intention and the future of finance. We have an amazing guest for our kickoff of the envision perspective, someone I have a tremendous amount of respect for. Steve. Frank. Steve, thanks for volunteering to be our guinea pig for our first episode. Steve helped us launch our Columbus office, our first outside office of the Greater Cleveland area. So Steve, thanks for joining us, obviously. Um, tell us a little bit about your practice, your life, how many years in the industry you have? Thanks, I appreciate it. Glad to be part of the podcast and it's nice to be the first one. Maybe set the ceiling for the top and let everybody follow through. But uh, no, the career started many years ago. Back in nineteen eighty seven, I got into the industry and wasn't sure what I was going to do and found a niche that I liked and just kind of gravitated to growing the practice that way, um, to where we're really coming from now and where the practice is, is that I was a sole proprietor for, for a number of years and where a lot of things really came into play for me was. When clients started to ask me questions of, hey, what's going to happen to, to what happens to my plan? What happens with what's going on if something happens to you? And, and ironically, that was about ten, fifteen years ago. Yeah. It's interesting when you're a sole proprietor and people start asking questions and they get a little older themselves or wondering what's going on. And I made a determination back then that I wanted to find a firm in an organization that was going to help fulfill all the promises I gave to my clients. And I knew my limitations, and I knew what I wanted to do. And I like a lifestyle type of practice where I wanted to enjoy myself, but also take care of my clients and went through the process of finding an organization that was able to help me take care of that. So when we talk about trust, when a client decides to trust you as their personal CFO, right? We talk about that role because the financial advisor role has expanded a lot over the course of the past, you know, five, ten years. What what can they expect from you and obviously our team as well. But you know, when you onboard a client, you know, what are they expecting from you? Well, I'm going to add a little bit to it because when I bring on a client for the first time, the one thing I'm looking for is collaboration. I want somebody that we're going to be able to work together. I'm going to be comfortable working with them. They're going to feel comfortable enough to share their personal information, their goals, their dreams with me. And where the trust comes into play is you have to earn the trust as well. It's just not going to be given to you at the beginning. Two way street. And I've learned many years ago that if I'm going to stay in this industry, grow my practice, I think you just really need to shower everybody with exceptional service. And everybody talks about, yeah, we have great service. We do this, but you have to you have to back it, back it up. You have to fulfill it, right? Always have an opportunity or obligation. In my opinion, that someone reaches out, I'm going to get back to them in a timely fashion if I'm in the office or not. Yeah, but I think you got to build that trust with those clients so that they are comfortable to be able to allow you to help them reach their goals and objectives. And the bottom line is, is you're there to help fulfill what their goals and objectives are and put their best interest in place of what they're trying to accomplish. And, uh, over the years, many of years of learning that and unfortunately, learning from, from mistakes over the years, um, it's been nice to be able to fulfill that and have a great practice and great clientele right now. So the way that your practice is structured, obviously been in the industry a long time, what has allowed you to continue to kind of adapt and the way that you service clients, but also, um, the way that you provide value for clients, obviously. And then how has joining a vision helped, you know, enhance that a little bit. I mean, it's been eighteen months and it feels like yesterday, right? October of twenty four, which is crazy. But, um, yeah, I mean, talk a little bit about how that has helped us. Uh, you spend more time on the, the time consuming things and help kind of offload a little bit of the stuff that not necessarily you don't like to do, but the things that take a lot of time that you know, you have a support team for. And that's the main reason that I would say I went through this venture, um, I felt I was able to take care of clients. I didn't want to have to do everything for them because in my opinion, advisors should advise, um, if we need to get some service work done, you got to be there and you got to be able to answer any and all questions, but we're there to, to be their personal CFO, as you stated, it's, it's a term we've used for many years. Um, but it comes back to being able to, to have a team behind you. Um, I had a great team when I was under Frank wealth management and when we were looking to make some transitions from that Again, I go back to I wanted somebody to fulfill the promises I was giving to my clients and for having that. The benefit I really saw with envision, the first and foremost was the age demographics, to be blunt. Um, I look at this industry, we're getting older. Most advisors, the average age is increasing tremendously and trying to find an organization that has the second generation, the younger advisors coming in that have the desire, have the interest and have the willingness to learn and be part of that team environment. Um, that's hard to find in this market right now. Um, I've been around long enough. I know a lot of friends of mine that are advisors and I've seen what they've done to transition their practice in retirement. And one of the things that always drives me nuts is when they turn around and they end up selling to an organization and they're out within one to three years and it's like, how, how are you taking care of the clients? And how are you building a relationship with the next generation of advisor and also the client, right? That as advisors get older, clients get older. How are you building that next generation with with the generation two, the beneficiaries and stuff like that as well? And we sometimes we look at our model and say, there has to be a better way to do this, right? There has to be a more efficient way to connect with. I think there's a miscommunication in the way that the connection of the person that has the current dollars versus the next generation and passing on wealth efficiently. Right. Um, so I think that is a good thing from a team perspective, because some of those clients and that generation, two of those clients might look at that and say, uh, to your point earlier, clients are asking you, what happens to you ten, fifteen years ago? That that's, I would say that's proactive. Most of the advisors that we have worked with and helped transition out of the industry are partnered with, have been, you know, three to five years before something like that happened. So I think that's a good thing because people are asking the right questions, but their kids might look at that and say, well, I don't know if I want to work with Steve Wright. I don't know if I want to work with with the guy that's been in the industry for thirty years, which is great. And the experience is, you know, second to none. You can't there's there's no alternative for alternative for something like that. But there is something to be said for the connection that that's made. Right. I don't want to work. You know, mom and dad did it this way. I don't want to do it the way that Mom and Dad did it. Right. Um, so I think there's a lot of power in that we have a team rather than just I have one junior person. If you don't like them, the assets are going to leave. Right? Correct. So, um, but let me add one more thing to that. And I think it goes back to the part of the reasons I really liked what the vision was because I was with another organization prior and they didn't do this, which was very frustrating in my behalf. And we've talked about it in a number of times. You've got to let the advisors advise, and if you're going to build an organization, you're going to need to build a team event. You've got to have centralization of services. And that's the one thing that was really resonated when I had our initial conversations, when I was looking at envision and what they were offering and providing was I had the infrastructure, I had the service model in place. I didn't have to recreate it. And for me, it allowed me to feel comfortable that I was going to be able to service my clients very efficiently, and then let me advise and do the things I want. And, and in the short time I've been with envision, grow it exponentially because it has freed me up to do more of this stuff I want to do. It's allowing more. I've got more introductions and more referrals, probably in the last year and a half than I did prior the last five years. Um, because it's allowing me to do things I need and want to do and transition my practice to where I'm going. And the next phase that we're working on is getting the other advisors involved in my practice and into my clients. And that's been fun. That's been an enjoyable situation. You see it in the clients face. One of the things you asked about my practice and we'll talk about is I do a lot of work in corporate retirement plans, and we do a lot of education with the employees and with the organizations, and really try to help that the employees themselves get to a position to be able to they're able to retire. And you get the old gray haired guy coming in and give the education, but then you get a lot of people coming up and wanting to, to have a conversation and potentially work with you personally. And it's nice having that next gen be able to, to help fulfill and take care of those for the long term. Well, let's, let's call the participants and the employees an underserved market, right? I mean, you, you know, the, the industry standard. And when we take on a corporate retirement plan. Our fiduciary responsibility is to the company, right? It's not to the employees. We as a firm have done a great job of going above and beyond and saying, first of all, one of the reasons you're either starting or stopping a corporate retirement plan is because you want to retain employees, right? I mean, like, that's a big thing, like the plan that me and RJ are onboarding right now. The whole reason they're starting the plan is because they're having trouble retaining employees. So for us, that added value. Yeah. You know, it takes a lot of extra time, but going that extra mile for those individuals is one of the reasons that we might get hired over somebody else. And that speaks and goes a long way for the corporate sponsor, because a company that really cares about their employees, that's why they're doing it. Right. So I think that's really important. But the other thing that that you touched on, that I want to talk about is the transition in general, right? So easy in theory with Commonwealth didn't have to make a broker dealer change. But I think there is some misconception about. Whether you're an affiliate or a partner. Selling a portion of your practice or just tying in for back office support. There's definitely a misconception in our world for the advisors that are looking at that long term succession continuity, You know, the thing we hear a lot is I don't have time to service the referrals that I get. Right. You have one junior and one back office support person. That junior is not ramped up exactly the way you want it to be, or you don't have you as the advisor don't have enough time to spend with that junior. We've kind of created a model to make that a little bit more, you know, help them get tied into the best role that they that that they're most comfortable in. But I think for the advisor, you get to a point where you want to build all the systems and operations that we already have, you can't do that in service your clients at the same time. No. So there's a lot of misconception around an affiliation in our world, right? Especially with all the. Transactions that are taking place in the M&A space and private equity and how they're getting involved and the transition from the ten ninety nine model to the W2 model. But I think there is a lot to be said for the misconception of joining a firm and what that means when you join envision, you're a client of ours, right? As a financial advisor, like it's our job to make sure that that goes smoothly for everybody's sake, right? It's mutually beneficial. So like I said, I think that there is something that is, you know, skipped over there because everybody thinks of a strategic partnership or an affiliation or whatever it might be as I'm selling my soul. Right? And it's the opposite. Oh, one hundred percent. And I think I shared a story with you with an advisor friend that we know that was making a comment. And he goes, I'm not really interested because I don't want to be told what to do. Right. And my comment back to him was, no one's told me what to do. If anything, I've given my opinion and my thoughts and concepts of what I did and what was successful for me, and they've at least listened and was willing to maybe adapt and modify some stuff because they're wanting to learn more. Yeah. I mean, and you've taught us a ton about the corporate retirement space. And that was the interesting part of having that conversation, because it really resonated to me, is like, this is where I go back to the beginning of an ideal client. My ideal situation is a collaborative effort, and it's been that way from the very beginning. But I hear you, I hear what you're you're saying again, I've only experienced my process and what I went through. Um, but I went in with the anticipation of I needed somebody to help support what I'm doing, but allow me to do the things I want to do. And that's where envision really came into play. And I still have all my independents. I get to do all I want. Yes, I did sell a portion of the revenue to get that support, but again, you've not told me anything I needed to do specifically. And if anything, you've given me more information than I had before with different investment firms and different programs that I wasn't aware of because I was on my own. So it really magnified the relationship and the reasoning and the purpose behind it. Well, so, you know, I'm not going to get too far into details with what deal structure and stuff like that, but I think there is something to be said for the strategic partnership versus an affiliation, right? Walking before you run. Right. Um, testing the water, so to speak. Something like that is. We're kind of flipping the script and saying, you don't have to sell to work with us. You don't have to become a W2 to work with us. We want to find ways to take what you have been successful in and create an efficient model so that it can be implemented for everybody within the firm, because if it's worked for you, it's probably going to work for everybody. If they stick to the same processes and procedures, right? As you know, we're very process and procedure oriented. We're very intentional with the way that we roll out tech. Yeah, it takes longer. I know I'm frustrated just as much as you are, but to a certain extent, when we clean up a lot of the tech that we use, the intention is that someone can come in and spend time and effort into it and understand it, get all the fluff out of the technology space, use intentionally exactly what we want to use. And if there's something that you bring up that's worked well for you, then we can add it. But we're not going to roll out something that's that's halfway there. Right. And I think there's a lot of people that could find some frustration in their current situation that that is one of the main issues. I had a conversation with a young advisor the other day, jumped to a different firm. They talked about all these tech stacks and did a bunch of demos and everything's great. And it's, you know, everything is halfway there, right? So that's something that, again, your client of ours, that's just a reflection of us more than anything else. So we're very intentional about the way that we do that for a good reason, right? We don't want to get halfway there and be like, ah, this isn't going to work out. We don't want that to happen. Right? I mean, there's something to be said for, I don't want to say time wasted, but. A good partnership can go a long way When, uh, when time is spent in the right areas. Yeah. And to add to that a little bit, I think it comes back to when I came, when we got connected, I came with the attitude that I wanted to join a firm, and I knew that all of my decisions weren't going to be followed and taken one hundred percent. And that to me was I just wanted to have my voice heard, give my opinion, make it worthwhile. And that's where it's been comfortable where again, a lot. And I came in with the attitude that I didn't have an end game. I mean, we've still talked about it and we're your affiliation motto is and we're the W2, the ten ninety nine concept is going to come into play is that in a couple of years, my situation may change and it gives me that flexibility. And that's been very comforting to allow me to to do the things I want to do, but also plan for what I want to do. Because let's be blunt, in our industry, advisors never retire. They just kind of go in the sunset. And that's part of my objective, is that I want to get to the point where I'm getting a lot of other envision advisors, not just in RJ or an AJ, but just getting the whole team involved that with that technology, with that services, that it doesn't matter what client calls in, right? Everyone's knowing what here's where your notes are, here's what the stories are, here's what the systems are, and they're able to pick it up right at the beginning. And that is, that is very comforting to be able to give to a client to say, it doesn't matter if I'm on vacation or I'm not here, just we could help service you. And we've experienced that in the last probably six months even. Yeah. Um, but no, I think it's the technology stack and the technology. And this is one that Commonwealth kind of forced our hand a little bit as well with some of the changes because of the changes they went through, because we're going to have to go through it anyway under the LPL version anyhow. Um, and I'm an old dog. New tricks. I don't like doing that and trying to learn all the different nuances. It will take some time, but we are looking for that efficiencies out there. But um, I just to hit that affiliation concept, allowing me to do what I wanted for my own practice and my own personal opinions. The companies allowed me that flexibility. Well, to your point, we've done eight transactions, eight transactions to date, right? Some minority ownership, some one hundred percent buyouts, whatever it might be. A lot of the conversations that we have in that space is the sooner the better. I never want to put an advisor in a position to push them in one model to towards the other because of a scare tactic or. But there is something to be said for. Our shortest transaction that we've done was eighteen months. Guess where we've had the least amount of retention in that eighteen month window, and it hasn't been a bad number. Don't get me wrong, because those clients are serviced very, very well. Transaction. And the communication from an advisor standpoint was done very, very well. But the longer the advisor stays around, whether it's in that affiliation model, that override model or the, you know, sell a portion and continue to work as equity partner model. The longer the better, right? And we've seen that. I mean, like in a lot of the practices that we've worked with, we've had advisors. I mean, Dennis's practice, we started in twenty twenty two and he's still licensed with us. He still does some trading for us. He still does answer some client calls for us when they call him, which is awesome. He gets to connect with them. Yeah, but he's in Hilton Head five months out of the year, which is great. That's the whole idea, right? To your point. So. There's a lot to be said for the time and effort that's put in on both sides. It is not a one size fits all. And it's not a, you know, one way street. That's why I said it's collaboration. Yeah. So let's talk about your transition for a second. Um, obviously relatively easy one. Data aggregation is always the biggest issue. We're missing data. Clients have been clients for thirty years. Things have been updated. They don't call you. They don't let you know that they changed their address or change their phone number, or got a new phone, or they did, but it took them six months, right? We're in the middle of this data aggregation to bring things over from advisor three hundred sixty to Salesforce, which is our CRM. Talk a little bit about how the team has been helpful, not only to make that process smooth, but also clean some stuff up from all the thirty plus years of data that you have from clients. Well, again, it's the old dog new trick concept. I had to learn what Salesforce was and how it worked. And, and I was spending a lot of time kind of doing double entry with the CRM, with Commonwealth and Salesforce, just because I didn't want to miss out on the notes and try to keep the team involved and engaged with what's going on. So I think the hardest, hardest part to all of it was myself personally, but we have had some hiccups with the conversion of the data. And again, it's data data in, data out. Um, but with Jonathan, what he's been able to help and take care of and really take a lot of it all off of my plate, which has been helpful. It's been able to be a smooth transition and where we're moving forward with bringing Orion in for the trading platform and some of the other programs. Looking forward to this. And again, it goes back to it, Jim, is we don't have a choice. We were going to have to do all of this anyway because NFS is gone. Commonwealth is gone. Well not gone. Well, not gone up. But it's giving us the opportunity to kind of bring that over. So with the clients there's still cleanup that needs to be done. There's there's stuff I didn't even realize I had in my CRM that was there. Yeah. Um, but it's, it's nice to have that support to be able to get it taken care of appropriately. Client communication. Let's talk a little bit about the way that, you know, you communicate with clients that. You're making a change. Well, when we first met and we talked about it, I was amazed of how you guys had your communication set up. From the check in calls to the annual reviews to the all the networking media coverage and everything else. I'm like, you can't call my clients every month. They're going to think something's wrong, right? So that was a nice transition because that was something I wasn't doing as well as I could have been doing. So that was nice to have. That helps you track it, right? Worst case scenario, you don't have to be in a position to say, oh, well, I made this check because you, you come across clients at the club, right? Stuff like that. So that's great. But it's there as a reminder and it's there as something that, you know, you might not have done in the past, but clients appreciate. But it goes back to when I was a sole proprietor. I had two full timers and one part time. And we, I mean, I thought we did a good job keeping in touch. And we had a great annual review process. Uh, everything was running very smoothly there, but that's about the only process that we had for that. The check ins were as a periodic or as needed basis, but it is nice to get that reminder every so often. And I will say I have been able to communicate a lot more and, and I will go back to, to what Rachel's been able to provide with the social media and all the different content and be able to post all this stuff. It was nice to have that support where I was previously, but this has taken it to a different level, which is great. And again, clients get inundated from an email standpoint, fine. You know, you get one hundred plus promo emails in an afternoon. But you know, even if you get a twenty percent, thirty percent open rate, something that clients didn't think about before, it drives traffic one way or the other. It gets the whole purpose of the conversations, and the educational things that we do as a firm are to, to give clients a different perspective on the way they live their lives. But I also go back to what really, and I focus on what's been going on with the market last spring and this spring. The communication is, and I've learned this from my clients because when back in two thousand and eight, when the market was imploding and you were calling clients and, I had some of my best clients. It's like, all right, well, what are you going to do? I'm like, well, we're going to stay the course. It's like, well, why are you calling me? It's like, yeah, I see what's going on with the market. They just want to be, uh, be aware that you're there. Yeah. They want to know that you're, you're on top of it. You're, you're, you're doing what you need to do and you're communicating with them in whatever form or fashion. Um, yeah, there's something needs to be done with the client. We're reaching out, we're having that dialogue, we're having that conversation, but having that communication in place that, I mean, it was not easy to get done previously. And this is I don't think about it. You guys are already ahead of it. Yeah. Which is great for me. Makes your life easier. So someone's listening to this podcast, hopefully. I don't know, you know, first one, um, client or an advisor, what are some things that when they think about their own situation, they can take away from a conversation like this first and foremost, and I already made reference to it. I'm, you've heard me say it a hundred times. You have to have a system in place to allow the advisors advise, have the centralization of services so that it's repetitive within the organization, that it's easy for anybody in the team to be able to take care of. When a client calls in, no matter what. Right. That to me is probably the most important thing. Because if you're trying to do. Everybody has their own investment portfolio and someone calls in and it's like, well, I don't know what you're doing. You have a sole proprietorship. You don't have a team. Right? By having that environment in place is, is exponential because it makes it so much smooth for when a client comes in and again, take care of them. It's also helping with what we just did this past fall with our investment analysis. We do have asset Mark, which is there. We have Clark Capital, we've had Commonwealth as part of the program as well, but allowed us to go back and put me back in my roots, a little bit of building the investment portfolio. That was very important to having those processes in place and for any advisor or any client calling in, is having that system in place allows the advisor to be there, be present whenever you're calling, be be aware of what's going on and know what's going on with your plan, as well as the team members knowing what's going on well with the plan, because that's what it's all about. They just want to know someone's over there overseeing being able to take care of what they need taken care of. And for the advisors themselves, you can't do it all. And if a lot of people are listening to this with a transition philosophy, you're already one step out the door and you've got to make sure that the clients are taken care of and you can't leave them hanging in the future. And again, there's there was a great money out there when I went through my transition. I looked at a number of different firms, and I really fine tuned what I wanted. And again, for me, this is what's the best. And I'm not saying I have the best of all and know all of everything, but for taking care of the clients, this is a good situation. So to an advisor that hasn't thought about something like this yet, right, we look at how does that conversation start? You know, it's just a dialogue. It's what are you really, really good at? What do you want to do? Yeah. Where do you find your your self wishing that you had more time. And a lot of people think about a transaction or a partnership or an affiliation as the way that we integrate a team, even if that person has an admin or a junior advisor, the way that we think about it is that person, and the nicest way possible is almost more important than the advisor. You get a lot of people, I hear it all the time. Well, you know my admin, they don't want to talk to me. They want to talk to my admin. They want to talk to my office support staff. They enjoy that. They enjoy that other connection. So bringing that person into the fold and putting them in a really, really comfortable position to do what they're really good at. Like Darla, for example, was really great at what she does. So when you look at something like that and say, all right, well, this person's really good at this, even to their purpose, they don't like spending time on X, Y, and Z. It's great. Somebody else in the back office can pick up where we left off. It's about efficiencies. So I think there is something to consider where maybe you feel like you're dropping the ball. And, you know, we go to all these conferences, right? And there's all these booths there with all the technology stacks. And we've talked about this before. You can only take away one or two things because it's just like so much inundated information, but it's really good information. And if an advisor, a sole practitioner with an office person or a junior advisor can take one or two things from that, why wouldn't you take one or two things from us? Right? Very much so. That's the way that I think about it. Um, well, thank you for taking the time with us today. It was awesome. I think it went great. Really happy that we were able to spend the time together. Sad we're not able to play golf, but we'll have some other opportunities. Yeah, I'll play better than I did last year for sure. So I'm excited. Thanks for spending the time with us.