How Neil Brown was able to Systematize His Financial Planning Firm by Identifying Bottlenecks and Streamlining the On-boarding of New Clients!

OWEN: My guest today is Neil Brown and he is a certified financial planner, and also a certified public accountant at Burkett Financial Services LLC. Neil, welcome to the show.NEIL: Thank you for having me today, I’m looking forward to this.

OWEN: So let’s dive right in. What exactly does your company solve for your customers?

NEIL: We are a fee-only financial planning firm, which means that we deal with all the areas of financial planning for our clients, from invest planning, to income tax, and a state tax planning, to reviewing insurance documents, and the processes, and the systems that need to be taken care of for putting together a good retirement plan for everybody. So really when we look at it we work with a smaller group of clients that want to have somebody out there to basically be their personal CFO’s to solve those problems for them, their financial as well as many non-financial planning problems for our clients.

OWEN: Awesome. My listeners always want to know the scale of the business. First of all, we’ll talk about how many full time employees you guys currently have.

NEIL: We’re a small firm. We started out about 13 years ago with just myself, the owner of the firm and an administrative assistant. This year we finally added more people in. Last year we had a couple of interns. But this year we’ve got basically 5 full-time employees. We’ve got 4 financial planners as well as one administrative assistant. And really another financial planner who is semi-retired and he’s 70 that adds a lot of value to our clients as well. This year we’re adding the new employees and the new staff, as well as new clients. That’s really been a growing pain.

OWEN: Yeah. Also, just so the listener understands what was last year’s revenue and what you guys are expecting to do this year?

NEIL: We probably increased revenues from about 800,000 to about a million one. So about 30% increase in revenue. This year a lot of it has been internal growth but a lot of it has been new clients as well.

OWEN: Awesome. The goal of this interview is to talk about how you’ve been able to systematize the business so that it can literally run without you. Before we get to what you’ve done so far, I want to take the listener back to how it used to be before. So what would you say back before you had the business systematized what will you say was the lowest point of the business and describe how bad it got.

NEIL:  I think the hardest thing was really just keeping flow of everything. Trying to understand what we’re doing for each client, where something was in the process, where it was stuck in a bottleneck, or whose desk it was on, and trying to follow it. It was very difficult. We didn’t really have a systems and a process. We did a lot of stuff with emails back and forth, which works fine unless the other person on the other email side didn’t do what he or she was supposed to do. A lot of the other things, we were copying stuff back and forth.  We said, “We did it this way for the client.” The last client said now we need to go back and find where we were, and copy and duplicate it, and basically build the wheel every time. It was painful.

OWEN: Yeah, another thing you mentioned, also when you guys expanded and brought on new people, you also had the issue of trying to make sure that everything was being done the way you guys will do it now that you added a new teammate. Can you talk about that too?

NEIL: Yeah. Like I said, we’ve grown over the last 12, 13 years. This has been our biggest year of growth. We’ve added 2 new advisors. Last October we replaced an administrative posting. We had a couple of interns last year. In the past, the way it worked was it was all in my mind. I knew when somebody came on-board what I needed to do and what somebody else needed to do. If only one client came on-board, that was easy. But multiple clients became more difficult. The big thing is with the new staff, we’ve got a younger staff, she’s 23. I want systems and processes, she can’t think like me. But if she can do the work like me, if I can say, “Here’s everything in my mind that you should be doing.” I do that, and sometimes I feel like to go through and change the systems because I take something for granted. It’s just in my mind.

OWEN: You also mentioned how because of the growth, and you’re having more clients, the amount of work you had to do was also increasing. Talk about that too.

NEIL: Yeah, it’s been a great thing with the system put in place. Now, when a new client comes on-board it basically…

OWEN: Before we talk about the systems being in place I was trying to paint the picture of what it was. As you guys were growing without the system and [Unintelligible 00:04:42] coming in.

NEIL: Oh, okay.

OWEN: Yeah, talk about that.

NEIL: It was tough. Like I said, there wasn’t a system, it wasn’t a process. It was more just recreating the wheel. I knew what needed to be done but then I had to sit down and type it all out. I’ll have to sit down and go through somebody else’s assignments or somebody else’s task and do it again. We did not have a client relationship management software in there to manage and to make it an efficient growth process.

OWEN: Do you remember a specific time or moment when you realized, man, I can’t do this anymore. You just had to change how things were. Share the story.

NEIL: Yeah, it’s probably about the late 2012, early 2013, when we started bringing on 2 new interns. I was excited about it because we needed help. But then I was very worried about it because they wouldn’t know how to do anything, and my goal is to be efficient, to be effective, to teach them, and to have them help me and not hinder me. So I had to go through and I spent… There were nights where I would go home and I would spend hours at night just typing a path, trying to flow it out and say what needs to be done when a new client comes on-board. What button did they have to click in the software, to that extent. Because to me it was second nature, but to a new person they had no idea. To click the okay, to click the not okay, or to do this. It was early 2013 when the new intern started coming on-board. I just started feeling overwhelmed and something had to change.

OWEN: At that point you brought on the interns. Obviously you’re going to be paying for them to be working with you, and now you realize that you had to actually get them doing the work just like you would. So you realize you need to document how you get work done so they do it the way you want them to do it. What was the very first thing you did to solve this problem you just mentioned earlier. I think during the pre-interview you talked about, one of the biggest things you guys did was renting a CRM. Talk about that.

NEIL: Yeah. When we look at a [Unintelligible 00:06:52] financial planning firm there’s a lot of different, there are two or three main CRM’s that are out there. We chose to use one called Junxure. We’re using it more as a database capture. Social security numbers, account numbers, and addresses, and phone numbers. But I would begin to grow and bring more people, clients as well as staff on-board, it needed to be more of a workflow. It needed to be something where if somebody came in and I have to push a button and it could say, these task need to get done. But then I had to go through within those to prevent myself from panicking, to make sure that the quality of work was the way it’s supposed to be. To lay it out and say, “I’ve always done this and now here’s how you’re supposed to do it. You need to go to the directory drive and find this file. Do these 10 things, and then do this, and then give it to me for review. And then we’ll talk about it.” There’s been a lot of things, the CRM’s, web videos that we do for training purposes, to let people go back and review them. Then go over all of that stuff.

OWEN: One of the things you mentioned was when you guys implemented the CRM thing for your business, which is Junxure. You went back and forth with them because sometimes you think that you placed the right information in how to do the task. It would turn out I wasn’t exactly… Talk about that. Because I want to listen to understand the dynamics that was going on back then.

NEIL: You’re absolutely right about that. Again, in my mind I could do something in 2 steps, but it might take 10 steps. I just may not actually think about the other 8 steps, they’re kind of intuitive, it just happens. But when somebody is new and somebody doesn’t have the experience, it just happens, doesn’t happen. It needed to be a documented workflow to give that person the steps on exactly what they have to do. Ironically, as you and I are talking about this today, my new staff pointed out to me yesterday. She said, “Neil, it seems to me that there’s a step missing in this process. You know what’s going on but I don’t know.” So I had to go through even today and revise that system, that process, so it was more commonsensical to somebody who doesn’t know what I’m talking about.

OWEN: Just summarize the first point you made regarding choosing the CRM. You guys needed a place where all the customer information was in that one tool, on one hand. On the other hand you want to be able to have your employees carry out tasks based on each of the customers. Basically, create a workflow of task, right? So those are the two main things. I’m wondering, when you chose this tool, how did you make that decision as to this was a tool we’re going to use to kind of help systematize our business, I’m just curious.

NEIL: Good question. As a [Unintelligible 00:09:51] financial planner there’s a lot best practices that are out there.

OWEN: Okay.

NEIL: When we looked at this particular software, which was provided as the best practice, there’s 2 or 3 of them. We looked at this one and said, “This is our practice model and how we do things.” But it’s ironic, when we first implemented it 4 or 5 years ago it was more of a database and just a capture. Whereas last year we started really going through and saying it needed to be a system and a process. Before last year it was just, I would have a task in there, kind of own a reactive basis to follow it. Now, all my task are on there as proactive basis when somebody comes on-board. Here are the 27 steps that need to be done for this client over the next 12 months. So it was about a 4-year flow from using it as a document tool, to using it as a true workflow tool, to really becoming a power user on it.

OWEN: Let’s talk about the very next thing you did. Because the first thing was identifying the CRM, and then the very next thing you did was you established an on-boarding system with 27 tasks basically when you have new client. Let’s talk about that in detail.

NEIL: Yeah. What we had to do on that, and that’s where I would go home at night and just spend hours trying to figure out what needed to be done. Every time a new client comes on-board I didn’t want to have to recreate a wheel. A new client can come on-board now and I push a button and I set the client’s the name up, that’s all I do. Then within about 60 to 90 seconds I’m done. I’ve set the client’s name up, I clicked the button. I said, “Please assign this 27 tasks out.” Some go to me as the main advisor, or my colleague as the main advisor. Some will go to one of the two planners within the office and some will go to the administrative person within the office. Now everything has to be cleared with it by the advisor. So if the administration or the planners doing the task they’re going to end up say, “Okay, today’s November 5th for instance.” And this is what they did. Then they send me an FYI so I can stay in the loop on things. Then when they complete something they’ll complete it off, and they’ll say I’m done with it. They’ll document what they’re done. They’ll FYI me, and I’ll go back and then I’ll read it. And I’ll say, that’s perfect, it looks good. Or I’ll open it back up and I’ll FYI them back. It’s almost perfect. But there’s one other thing that we needed to do. I’ll leave it open and let’s just follow up on it at this point in the future. It was kind of that way to make sure all the task are flowing. But to really keep the advisors I manage about 70 relationships. It’s difficult to manage 70 relationships off the top of my head. I had to do it with high quality but the clients are expecting for the fees that they’re paying. But a lot of it Owen, you can never implement anything unless you have feedback and acceptance from the people who are going to be using it. There are things that I’ve done where I thought was wonderful and somebody just kind of tapped on the shoulder and say, “That’s not all that great, or that doesn’t make sense.” I might have gotten a little bit defensive about it. When I looked at it I could either agree and say you’re absolutely right, or you don’t understand how it’s going to flow in 6 months from what you’re doing. I promise you that once you see that it’ll be great.

OWEN: Just so I can make the listener understand how the tools was actually implemented, the workflow part of it. So, once the new customer comes into the company you create a task, and that task launched 27 tasks just for that customer. Each task is now split into different people in the company handling a series of tasks. When they get done with theirs, I’m assuming it lets the next person know it’s their turn to complete their stuff. Because I think you said something about people having to sign off on each task before it moves on to the person. I’m trying to understand that.

NEIL: Yes. Let’s just say there are two different types of task Owen. There are the tasks that just that one staff has to do. And when they complete it then the advisor has to okay that it’s been done. Then there are task that when that one person completes his or her step, then it will flow through to another person to do his or her step, and then the advisor has to clean up on it. Sometimes it’s just a one level, sometimes it’s a multi-level. So the task as you say are built that way. So some are going to get done immediately, and some are going to have over gears that flow off of them throughout the process.

OWEN: Okay. Since we’ve been giving the listener a kind of preview into the systems that you have in a company, let’s talk in detail about them. What specific systems now have enabled the business to run without you having to be there? So far we’ve been talking about the CRM you guys implemented. I think you also mentioned how you have videos that… Talk about the videos that you guys use in the business.

NEIL: We got multiple offices, we’ve got a small financial planning firm and a large CPA firm. But a lot of people on that large CPA firm side, they kind of laugh at me because I am a true believer in systems and processes. When new people came on-board I was like, “Oh my goodness, I was scared.” These people tend to bother me all the time. I finally sat down and said, if I can use a screen capture software, we use Camtasia for instance. So we use the Camtasia software, and I can either go through in 5 minutes and show how something’s done, and I’ve got something that literally takes 45 minutes to show how something is done. But we got a directory on our directory tree at the office, that is just a policy then procedures directory. In there, there are probably 20 to 25 recorded videos on things that we do over and over. What happens is the CRM software task might say go to the policies and process directory on the directory tree, look for this video, watch it, now do this or this client, because I can’t type all of that. But it just needed [Unintelligible 00:16:10] and easy to go through. If I can show you how to do it in a video then if you have a question all you do is hit rewind and watch it again. It was keeping a lot of the questions off of me as I love to teach. But I don’t want to waste my time nor the other person’s time on easy things. I want them to be able to do all of this stuff, and then let’s really get into the details of financial planning.

OWEN: You also mentioned that you guys have pre-written task templates, which can be assigned on a case-by-case basis depending on the client. Talk about that.

NEIL: Yeah. So when a client comes on-board, as we said, there’s about 27 tasks that go out. But some of those tasks that go out Owen simply say think about doing these things for the client. Now, if it applies, we’ve got over 53 populated financial planning task within our database. For instance, a social security analysis may not apply to a client that’s 50 years old. But there’s going to be a task that says think about these things. Now, as my client is 62, 65, somewhere along in there, that social security analysis task might be very important. So in that 27 tasks it says think about this. And then if I need to do the other, I just go choose from those 50 tasks, click a button, and there’s typically, 1, 2, 300-word task already assigned that says, here’s how to do all of this stuff. Now go do it. Then when you’re done with it I’ll review it.

OWEN: It’s kind of like a choose your own adventure kind of thing where those 27 questions or tasks initially, parts of them also have questions that basically if the person doing the task, it’s kind of like a condition. So if this condition that it triggers out a bunch of other pre-written task if that condition is met. But if that condition is not met then continue down the flow and do the other step in the task. Is that what you were saying earlier?

NEIL: Yes, that’s pretty much it. The difference is it’s not automatic, it’s the advisor has to actually say, “Well that applies, now I need to go assign it. I’ve not been able to figure out, kind of like you said, if-then statement to say if I click this then automatically assign that, that CRM software. Unfortunately it’s not set-up that way. I’ve gotten stuff written in the 27 times that says, “Go think about these things.” Now that applies then I’ll go pull from the other 50 and assign it out to somebody. That somebody may be me having to the work as well.

OWEN: Okay. One of the things my listeners always want to know is to see the business from a summary of how the different parts of the businesses are all working together. I use this analogy. Imagine you have a potential customer who’s interested in having you guys do the financial planning for them, and they’re probably on the internet looking for a potential vendor to use. You have that person on one part of the conveyor belt. On the other end the person has become your customer and now they love you guys. They’re out there talking about you guys, referring you. But behind the scenes there’s a bunch of systems and processes working behind the scenes to make that transformation happen. I was wondering if you can give us a summary of what’s going on behind the scenes.

NEIL: Yeah. Henry Ford kind of did the same thing with cars. I don’t want to be a mass producer of financial planning. Our desire and our goal is to give customer service at a very in-depth level to a select group of people. But that conveyor belt question, if the administrative department, which is a department of one is not doing hi-tech service. When a client comes on-board and taking care of a little detail, then the client could care less how good we are on the financial planning side on the back-end. So I want quality. When our administration send something out, at that point there’s not a recreating the wheel. In Outlook there’s an Outlook template, a .oft file that I’ve written that I put every attachment in there that goes to the client. So that I don’t want the administrative assistant on Tuesday having no typos but on Thursday having a typo. So it goes through. And I said, “Okay, now that we’ve done this now we’ve got to fall into the other parts of the firm.” And the other parts just out of the conveyor belt need to just as systemized, just as processed, and just as good. Because clients who pay a lot of money want to make sure that they’re getting great service. People don’t mind paying for good service. You don’t want to pay for bad service.

OWEN: You’ve talked to us about the administrative part of the firm. I just want to give the listener a clear idea of what the other parts of the firm are and what exactly are they doing.

NEIL: Okay. So for myself as the main adviser. I’m going to go through and I’ve got to build a client’s investment portfolio. With these systems on our investment side of the office that says we got 7 or 8 different portfolios that are pretty built the way we run things within our investment profiles, with our investment systems. So we’re managing those at an upper level versus smaller level, individual clients. So from the investment side, the systems are there to help manage that. From an income tax review side we’re now looking at a client’s income tax return to determine what should we be doing from a federal and a state income tax side to make the client financial planning process be more beneficial them. They were going to look at a retirement planning side. Those 27 tasks Owen to get signed out, they’re going to take place over… Some are going to start in 2 days, and some are going to start in 9 months. When our clients come on-board they get a 2-page document from us that says, “Here’s the meeting process over the next 12 months. We’re going to take care of the investment profits within the first 90 days. Then we’re going to move into an income tax planning review. Then we’re going to move to an insurance planning review. We’re going to look at an estate plan overview, we’re going to move into a retirement overview. The document that they get from us coordinates with the systems and processes, and a time frame. So the client knows the expectations of… We’re going to talk about this but it might not be for 5 months. Now let me know if that’s more important than what we’re going to talk about in month 1. And we can switch around with no problem. But at least they know the expectations.

OWEN: Okay. I’m curious, what challenges did you have when you initially tried to create the systems and how did you even solve some of them?

NEIL: Oh man, if you could’ve seen the challenges and you could’ve seen my reactions to them, it would’ve been probably something we couldn’t put on the podcast. Just going through and trying to flow chart it. I’m not a flow chart guy. To flow chart or to type it out and to say, “Here are all the things that we have to do”, from bringing them on-board, to meeting the time frame, to reviewing their tax returns, even building somebody’s balance sheet. I probably got a 400-word document that shows my staff how to build a balance sheet, and where the pool all the information together. The one task literally could’ve taken me 3 hours to sit there and do a thought process, and go through. My boss, my colleague, he laughed at some of my task. He’ll say, “I’ve gotten lost just trying to read them. You lost me after the 4th paragraph.” But it was just very, very difficult to go through and to see from step 1 to step 9 what needed to be done.

OWEN: How did you overcome the challenges?

NEIL: There’s a lot of work just trying to go through and say, I’ve got new people coming on-board, what do I need to do? What did I do when this client came in, in the past, and what steps do we need to be doing, every single step? Where did we have problems where they got messed up before? That was probably a focus. I would say, a new client comes on-board, what is the bottleneck? If this doesn’t get done properly, it doesn’t matter how good the rest of it is, we’ve got to get this step fixed. My urgency was fixing some of the stuff on the initial on-boarding process and just setting them up within our own systems before we could even worry about the financial planning process.

OWEN: I get that. You’re focused more on the bottlenecks first and basically in this case what would be the first series of things that your new customer would experience first. So you had to fix those first and then you prioritize with those. And when you fix that you started fixing all the other things that come afterwards. The other issue you mentioned was getting buy-in from everyone was tough. Talk about that.

NEIL: We’re a small office. So that’s a little bit easier, but we do have 2 offices. So I’m not really in front of everybody to make sure that there’s buy-in or to make sure that everybody’s following in my mind what I think is laid out properly. The thing is we’re a very open office. And if there’s an issue with something… Everybody knows that they can come to me and say, “Neil this just doesn’t seem right.” Maybe it is right, and they’re just going to have to live with that. But maybe it is right and I didn’t document it very well. So it doesn’t make sense. Maybe I was just wrong. There are too many steps in there, it shouldn’t be done that way. The buy-in is not only from the people doing it, the buy-in is also from the people who are implementing it. I’ve got to realize and  be open that my way is not always right either. The only way it’s going to get done is everybody is happy and willing to do it. And it’s an easily followed process.

OWEN: So basically the way you solve that problem of getting buy-in is making sure that they understood their input is also very important. If they find out that there’s a better way to do something, what you instructed and how to do it is difficult, you’re to listen so that you can work on fixing it making it better for everybody.

NEIL: Absolutely, and I think that’s the same. In any firm or any type office environment that you work in, there’s always somebody above you. And if somebody above you need to be willing to listen to the people below you and to get that input, thankfully, we would in an environment with a small group. But there are levels and everybody kind of knows what their levels are, but nobody ever enforces them. We are a team environment. I think without a team environment, without buy-in being there were too many people trying to do their own thing.

OWEN: You also mentioned that handling the writing and at the same time try to implement the systems at the same time was an issue. Talk about that.

NEIL: Yeah, I think from that standpoint because so much was tied up in my mind and not necessarily written down. Just to tell somebody when you’re trying to build somebody’s balance sheet or to do something for somebody, it’s not just looking at the information that the client gives you. You might have to go to the tax return and without getting too technical I would know where to go on the tax return to look something up. But maybe a new staff doesn’t know where to go. So I would have to say, “Go, look at this tax form, blah, blah, blah…” And go through and have that staff call something up with that tax form. So again, to me something that with 20 plus years of experience in financial planning may seem pretty basic. To somebody who’s 23 that just came out of college they don’t know that. And I’ve got to be understanding that there is a knowledge gap, and to fill that knowledge gap is going to be a documentation process.

OWEN: Okay. You mentioned some of the tools you’ve used, but I’m just curious, how exactly did you document procedures and processes for your business? And share the tools you  used to do that.

NEIL: The one good thing about the Junxure, the CRM software that we do use, it’s not that fancy. So it’s basically just I would go through and I would type in Word. And I’d say when a client comes on-board, we have to do XYZ. Then I would go in into my word processing software Google Docs, and I would type in, “This how it needs to be done.” I would read it and look at it, and I say missed a step. And I kind of go through and summarize the different steps. Just basically lay it out in a checklist. The paragraphical checklist, whatever you want to look at, to go through it. There’s not a lot of if-then statements or if this happens then flow it here. The way the CRM software is set-up, you document the task, you do the task, and then move to the next one. It’s just a lot of workflow document is just manual documentation, but at least it’s done now. And we’ve brought in more clients this year than any year. It’s an easy process now, it really is.

OWEN: Awesome. Documenting procedures and all that is one thing but you also be able to track and verify the results are being delivered. So I’m wondering how exactly do you do that.

NEIL: Again, the FYI’s in the software and the CRM software, great. I assign a task out, a part of that is going to go back to the videos that we do. When a new person comes on board I want them to look at the videos so they know exactly, when they’re doing something, how I want it documented that is being done. If you just mark a task off and you say I completed it. I’ve got to go through and basically do all the details to see if you completed it. But if you mark a task off and say, I’ve completed it. These are the things that I’ve done. I’ve filled in this area that you asked me to do and now I’ve done this. But now it’s pretty easy for me to take your word for it. I’m going to go back and review some of that. The first time that you mark it off as complete and maybe you missed something. I’m going to open that task back up on you and say, “You said you did this but we need to make sure you do this better.” The videos are going to show people how to document it for me.

OWEN: Yeah. What I’m getting from that is even as they’re doing the task that literally shows them how to do the task, they also have to summarize what they did?

NEIL: Absolutely. Because I don’t want to just say you completed the task, but that doesn’t help me as an adviser at all. I want to know every step that you’ve done. I’ve spoke with the client today, the client said this. I called him back in 3 days to follow-up on that. I know exactly you’re taking care of it. But you just say complete or delay it. I don’t know what you did to delay it. Maybe you didn’t do anything, maybe you didn’t want to deal with it today. So that helps me tremendously.

OWEN: Is that like the feedback they leave on the work they do, is that like a task that’s now created for you to come and read the feedback, and then act upon a feedback?

NEIL: Yes.

OWEN: Okay.

NEIL: I had to go in there and to manually acknowledge that I have read it and check it off that I have read it. Just today I’m not in the office today, I’ve just taken some vacation time this week. I’ve just been managing a few things from out of the office, but I probably had about 20-25 task, it was just that when somebody said, “Hey, I’ve done this.” And I have to manually go in there, look at it, and say I’ve acknowledged it.

OWEN: Okay. You share the story during the pre-interview about how mentorship plays a role in how you’re working with the employees to improve their results. Can you share that story?

NEIL: Yeah. I grew up in an environment where it was the way I’m trying to make it here. It was an environment where I had an advisor who was older than me, great experience. She took the time to train me and to teach me, and never made me feel that I made a mistake, always made me feel appreciated. Even when I made a mistake she would say, “Well, maybe you didn’t complete this the right way Neil because maybe I didn’t show you the right way.” It always made me feel good about it. I’ve got a new staff and I’m 20 years older. I’m trying to do the same thing to that person. It made a huge difference between a mentor and a pupil, than it is between an employee and an employer. And I’m an employee. My staff calls me her boss and I say, “Please don’t do that. I am your colleague, I am your mentor. If you don’t do well it reflects badly on me.” I try to go through it every day and say what can I do better? What do I need to be doing to make you a better person. I want you to be me in 20 years and me being retiring.” To me it’s a relationship process where there’s a relationship with your clients, or relationship with your boss, or relationship with your colleagues.

OWEN: Since you guys have a lot of systems in the business, I’m curious, how long have you been away from the business?

NEIL: When you say how long I’ve been away from the business, help me with that.

OWEN: I’m just curious to see how the longest time you’re not being there.

NEIL: The longest vacation I’ve ever taken, I took very late 2013, I took a bucket list trip to go, I’ve always wanted to dive the barrier reef in Australia. I never felt that I was able to get away to do that, nor that I had the reason or the time to do it. It was great. I managed a couple of text messages during the day, and I would do a couple of things. I actually stayed, logged-in to the system longer than I should have. And my boss, thankfully, he called the IT department, he said, cut him off. There’s no reason he needs to be connected to the office. If he needs to be connected to the office he’ll send you a text message, and then I’ll make a decision whether he needs to… It’s awesome, it was great. Everything was managed, all the task were taken care of. I might have spent 5 or 10 minutes a day looking at a couple of things, but it was great. It worked.

OWEN: That’s a testament of the fact that when you have systems in place you can actually do that. If we go back to how it was before, you’re taking a vacation, I’m not sure your colleague would have cut you off access if thing are breaking out.

NEIL: No, he probably would have said, “Please be here the fastest time.”

OWEN: How will you say the company has been transformed as a result of you investing the time to systematize it?

NEIL: We got a family feel in our company. But I think it’s because even more than that. We work hard and we do a great job. But it’s not necessarily about how many hours you work, it’s the efficiencies and what you get done. If I’m able to do the same stuff that I could do 10 years ago in 35 hours, then why should somebody say, “Neil, you’re not doing your job because you’re not working 55 hours.”

OWEN: Yeah.

NEIL: It’s just a more friendly environment.

OWEN: The results-driven basically. You’re working on the results.

NEIL: Absolutely.

OWEN: Awesome. How will you say your personal life has been transformed as well?

NEIL: I love to work number 1, so I can’t say anything about… I can step away from the office if I choose to and not worry about it, which I do. I do a lot of short trips, I do a lot of teaching throughout the country on tax and finance. And I’m able to just get away from the office for 3 or 4 days, not worry about it, go do a little teaching, go do a little hiking in the mountains and refresh. Because if you don’t refresh you will burn yourself into the ground. It doesn’t matter. You shouldn’t try put in so many hours. If you had to put in that many hours you need to have different staff or different systems.

OWEN: Now that we’ve established that you have systems in place that the business runs without you, I’m curious, where do you now focus most of your time on in the business now and why?

NEIL: Before we had these systems Owen I probably spent 80% of my day just making sure that the stuff that needed to get done got done. Now, I probably spend 20% of my day making sure that the stuff I needed to do get done. I probably spend about 50% of my day thinking and saying what do other advisors need to be doing. What do they need to be doing? How can we provide better and more advanced service to our clients? Training the other advisors, coming up with new ideas. Again, you go back to fees. People don’t mind paying for things. They don’t mind paying for things if you’re doing good work for them. I spend more time with my clients. It’s about face time. I’ve got to be technically sound. But if my clients don’t see me and they don’t know what doing for them, then it doesn’t matter how technically sound I am. So I’ve been able to work more on the relationships with my clients and more face time. They’re just running that little wheel round, and round, and round doing the same stuff over and over.

OWEN: During the pre-interview you mentioned that you’ve now had more face time with your clients during the last 12 months than you’ve had in the prior 5 years, talk about that.

NEIL: Yeah. That’s because of 2 things. One, the systems and processes, and 2, we got new stuff. So they are able to do more and we are able to provide better service. And it’s really about serving the clients, looking at building those relationships. And doing the value added stuff for the clients.

OWEN: Awesome.

NEIL: The clients appreciate you more if they can see you and it’s not always own the wheel type thing.

OWEN: What will you say is the very next stage, the very next step that someone who is listening to this entire interview all the way to this point should take in order to get started with transforming their business so it’s literally systemized and can run without them.

NEIL: I think the big thing Owen is you may not be there right now but where do you want to be? If you look at it and you said, “This is what I want my firm to look like.” Well, maybe you’ve already got 5 clients now but this is what I want my firm to look like in 5 years. Start the process now. It’s a lot easier to start a system and a process from the get go than it is to put one in place 10 years later. So I think you need to just… I’m not a visionary. I’m a very technical skilled individual but I’m not a visionary, so I waited until there was a problem to fix it. It would’ve been a lot easier if I was a visionary to have fixed the problem before it arose on practice management.

OWEN: Awesome. I’m curious. What books have influenced this way of thinking and why?

NEIL: There’s a couple of people within my type of practice. Deena Katz, she’s a financial planning professional with offices in Florida and Texas. She and her husband Harold Evensky are very into the systems and processes. There’s another individual tools and technology, David Druker that goes out there and talks about these types of things. And he goes out there and lays out a best practice scenario for people to look at.

OWEN: Awesome. What’s the best way for the listener to connect with you and thank you for doing the interview?

NEIL: I keep a personal website, down there is a lot of my contact information, Twitter, Facebook, things like that. But the website is www.uscneil.com.

OWEN: We’re going through a lot of questions, but I’m wondering, is there a question that you were wishing I asked you during the interview. If so post the question and the answer.

NEIL: I think the biggest thing that I enjoy and appreciate, that you did ask me, if you did I would’ve answered it this way. The books and the tools. That one was a little bit unusual for me when we talked about it. I’m glad you asked that because when I listen to these types of podcast, I’ll listen to other people in the business, that’s the stuff I want to hear. I’m glad you did post that question.

OWEN: Awesome. Now, I’m speaking to you the listener. What I want you to do is you’ve enjoyed this interview I want you to go ahead and leave a review for us on iTunes. To do that, go to sweetprocess.com/iTunes, or if you have an android phone you can leave a review for us on the Stitcher app. To do that you go to sweetprocess.com/stitcher. The reason to do that is because when you leave reviews for us other entrepreneurs would read reviews and be intrigued by your review, and come and check out the interview. Also, that brings us more listeners and that gives us more inspiration to go out there and find more entrepreneurs and guests like Neil Brown to come on here and talk about how they’ve been able to systematize their business. We all benefit from going behind the scenes to learn from how they’ve been able to create a business and now runs successfully without them. If you know another entrepreneur that will find this interview useful please share the interview with them. Finally, if you’re at that stage in your business where you’re tired of being the bottleneck and you want to get everything out of your head. All you got to do is sign up for a free 14-day trial of SweetProcess, and get your employees knowing exactly what you know so they can carry out tasks the way you want them to carry the task out. Neil, thanks for doing the interview.

NEIL: Owen, I appreciate it man, have a good day.

OWEN: And we’re done.