The Art of Client Onboarding

Maddie: Hello and welcome to XYPN Radio where we discuss everything you need to know to build a thriving, sustainable financial planning practice. I'm your host, Maddie Roach, and I'm an executive business coach here at XYPN. We are excited to have Libby Greiwe, the founder of Efficient Advisor on the podcast with us today.

Libby is a seasoned financial advisor and coach. Who helps advisors grow their businesses without burning out. She's built a seven figure practice while working 25 hours a week, and now she is sharing her secrets to success with advisors nationwide through her platform.

And today we dive into the onboarding process, a passion of Libby's, and quite frankly, an area where so many advisors can improve without that much work. We're looking forward to having this conversation with you. And without further ado, here's my interview with Libby.

Hello, Libby. Welcome to XYPN Radio. It is so nice to have you.

Libby: Thanks so much. I've been looking forward to this.

Maddie: Awesome. Libby, tell us a bit about yourself and the firm you've built for our listeners as we dive into the conversation.

Libby: Yeah, absolutely. Well, I'll take you back to 2008. So it all started back in 2008. For the previous four years I had been working around the clock, like an absolute crazy person building my business. You know, the nights, the weekends. The client that wanted to meet Saturday morning at 10:00 AM I was there.

I was your girl. That might sound familiar to a lot of listeners. And those four years were wild. I mean, I was stuck in the hustle and the grind and doing my thing, and I absolutely loved it. And then in 2008, something really scary happened for me. It had nothing to do with the market like that. That felt like easy peasy compared to the fact that I found out I was pregnant.

And so this was great news because my husband and I had really wanted a baby. But it was really scary for me because I realized in that moment that I. I had been hustling like a crazy person and there was no way that I could show up as the mom that I wanted to be and work at that pace. I knew I wanted to ultimately get down to a three day work week, but what I realized is I had that moment where I had that recognition that I wasn't building a business while I was making a lot of money, and I was super successful by, you know, outside looking in terms.

I didn't have a real business, the kind with systems and processes, I just had a very, very, very busy Libby. And even with support staff, I knew that if I didn't show up, things weren't going to get done. So I set out on this mission to really figure out how to optimize. I wanted to make the same amount of money.

I didn't want to give up the vision of success that I had for my practice. I knew I wanted to grow to a seven figure firm as a solo advisor. And I knew something had to give. So that's sort of where my obsession with systems and processes and efficiency started.

Maddie: Yeah. And just for some context, like how many clients were you serving at that time when push came to shove and you knew something needed to change?

Libby: Oh my goodness. Like 500 zillions. So I was with a broker dealer and in our area we had a lot of advisors start, but not a lot stay. So my practice became like the dumping ground for all orphan clients. So I can remember my goal was to be between 150 and 300 households, and I can remember opening up my CRM one day and we magically had 2,800 households assigned to our practice.

Maddie: Oh my gosh.

Libby: Uhhuh. Yeah.

Maddie: Okay, so at that point you thought, busy Libby, time to become efficient.

Libby: That was a more like, you can't kill me like this. That's never, ever going to work. Right? Yeah. I knew, like, I knew that that was, obviously 10 times the amount of households that I could serve well and in the way that I wanted to with a really, really high client experience that I knew would drive referrals.

Maddie: So where did you begin?

Libby: Yeah. So it was one of those things where I can vividly remember, okay, found out I was pregnant and like that next morning I sat down and was like, okay, what, what are the main processes in the business? And I really spent, and this is really something that's taken me 20 years to like fully distill down, but I've really identified that there are about.

Eight core processes that every single financial planning practice has. You know, really seven or or eight depending on if you manage money or if you have employees. And I started there and I really started looking at, okay, like, well, through the client journey, through the lifecycle of my business, what are those big processes?

And then what are the microprocesses within there? Within that, I could start to delegate that I could start to automate. Were there things that I was doing that weren't actually impactful? Was I doing 'em just 'cause I was trained to do it that way or because the guy you know next to me in the cubicle was doing it and I heard that that was really great.

Or the guy on LinkedIn I saw. And just for context, when I first started my practice, LinkedIn wasn't even a thing. That's how I know I feel very old sometimes. But you know, I was doing all of these things and it really kind of came down to what are these processes? How do I expedite them? How do I start to build in efficiencies that allowed us to deliver at a really high level, like that was, I was really successful. I was one of the top advisors at my broker dealer. I loved what I was doing. I was making a lot of money. I was really excited about all of that. And we were delivering a very, very high client experience to the clients, not to the 2,800, but to the 280 that we had identified inside of our book, that were the clients that we wanted to work with, not the ones that were randomly placed in our path.

But, we knew we wanted to root everything in client experience. So when I started looking at all of our processes through two lenses, through the lens of ease of doing business from my side, but then also really starting to understand the psychology of what our clients were experiencing and starting to look at our processes through the client experience lens, that's when everything really started to come together for me.

Maddie: Hmm. I love that. And we won't go through all seven or eight processes. Libby actually just wrote a blog for XYPN outlining those seven core processes that she's identified within a Affirm. So we'll be sure to link to those in the show notes, but I love this idea of the two lenses of the ease on you, but also from the client experience and I, I do think sometimes a lot of advisors forget one or the other.

Is that what you've witnessed as well in your practice?

Libby: Oh yeah, absolutely. So I'll give you one of my favorite examples and this, like, every advisor listening will be like, yep, I've done that. I can remember, you know, you'd close a really big client. So let's say a client decides to roll over a million dollars and you're like, oh my goodness, my work here is done.

Like. I am so excited. Let's get that paperwork going and I'm going to take the rest of the day off because I did really great. And whether you go home and go golfing or your self-care is a bubble bath and a book, you know, you might be on the golf course or in the tub like living your best life because you just closed this client and they're going through a completely different experience.

While the client might be. Really excited to work with you, right? They said yes, they want to do business with you. They're also going through their own emotional journey, right? So you're in the tub living your best life, and they're over there going, okay. What does this mean for paperwork? Like how much is this really going to be and what will that look like on our taxes?

And will our accountant charge us more if we have all these other rollover forms and oh my gosh, we have to set up a new portal and we're going to get all new account numbers and we have to change over the banking and oh man, we gotta fire Dave. Dave's not a bad advisor. We really liked working with Dave, you know, so they're going through this whole emotional journey and if our process is: take the rest of the day, just send them the paperwork. We're missing this experience that our clients are having that we're, you know, our practice should be helping facilitate that psychological journey that they're going through as well.

Maddie: Hmm. So well said. Libby, I'm interested in how you are able to get into that psychology. Have you just done hundreds of interviews with consumers and clients? Like how do you, and how do you encourage our listeners to be able to wear that hat effectively?

Libby: So it's really kind of three things. Number one is just all of the bonehead mistakes that I ever made. I always joke that all of our processes were rooted out of me looking like an idiot at some point. And how do I make sure that that never happens again? So what are the mistakes that we made? Where did we lose a client? Where did we have a client say, Hey, I'm frustrated by this, or This feels slow, or, what's going on here? Uh, where's my money at? You know, those types of questions where we were just trying to be really keenly aware of what our clients were asking and feeling. The second piece to that would be reading. I love reading books on psychology. One of the books that I always recommend for advisors in this space is Joey Coleman's. Never Lose a Client Again or Never Lose a Customer again. Great book that talks all about the psychology of buying. And this is for products, this is for services. And the research that they've, that they did was worldwide, cross industry.

Like I said, cross, you know. Brick and mortar slash product slash service and really trying to understand the research that's already out there. And then third, it's getting feedback from our clients and saying, how was that? If we would've done this, would that have improved the experience? Or just even being keenly aware of the feedback that they're giving us like, oh, that was so helpful.

Thank you so much. Oh my gosh, you're right. We do have to break up with Dave. Thank you so much for giving us this script. That's going to be really helpful for us to send him that email.

Maddie: Wow. It. Could you talk a bit more about what the resources are? I mean, are you actually giving them scripts to talk to their advisors?

Libby: Absolutely. So we would, Wow. so we've kind of broken onboarding into the like 90 days, right? And there's kind of something that we need to be doing inside of each of these chunks. So the first 30 days is all designed around just professionalism. And this is one of those pieces, like our job. The way that I viewed this in my practice was that my role was to show up, or my team's role was to show up as sort of that Ritz Carlton concierge.

We wanted to be able to, the Ritz Carlton's kind of philosophy is we want to anticipate our guests needs before they even know that they have them. So same thing. On our end, we wanted to be able to anticipate our clients' needs. Before that they knew that they even had them, right? So we didn't want them sitting at home stewing about having to write this email to Dave, you know, to break up with him.

We just wanted to say, Hey, let's bring this elephant into the room. Hey, this is something that you are going to go through, you're going to experience. So here is an email that we have found works really well. We've had lots of other clients use this and the feedback has been really great, right? 'cause we look at friction, in business as really anything that's going to slow down the process. And there's nothing worse for an advisor than just getting a transfer notice, right? You're, if someone's transferring money away from you, you are going to pick up the phone and you're going to call that client and you're going to place doubt in their mind.

So for you, the advisor that's doing the transferring, you know that that's going to be the experience that the other advisors going to have. So how do we help grease the wheels? If we can provide our clients a very kind email that they can send before the transfer notices go out thanking Dave for his years of service, explaining that they're going in another direction, that they're not really interested in having a meeting, that they're feeling pretty firm about the decision that they've made.

And, you know, if we could provide them a really, really kind script that they didn't have to come up with on their own, we found that it reduced some of that transfer friction for them and it made it less awkward, right? Like the goal was the client experience. So they didn't have to sit down and type up something and you know, then have Dave call them and then awkwardly, you know, have to deal with that, right?

We gave them even a follow up, like, Hey, if Dave emails you back and says he'd like to meet, or if Dave gives you a call, here's another script for you. Here's kind of a follow up as well. So that's what I'm talking about when we're talking about like, how can we anticipate the journey that our clients are going through and maybe they don't have an advisor and they don't need that.

Step, but it shows up in a way that's really professional. That's like, Hey, we've done this before, right? We know what you're going to experience. We know what you're going to need, and our job is to help facilitate that and make it as easy as possible for you because we want to deliver this concierge level experience.

Maddie: Yeah, absolutely. You rattled off a number as, as we kind of got into this, but I'd love for you to walk us through a few more of kind of what those needs are from a client perspective that maybe some of our advisors who are listening who haven't yet served clients in this space might want to keep their eyes out

Libby: Yeah, absolutely. So the way I break it down is kind of let's talk onboarding. So the first 30 days is where you're exhibiting this professionalism. Days 30 through 60 is where we are coming in and we are really surprising and delighting our clients and they days 60 plus, really 60 through the first year, we are wanting to.

Not just surprise and delight, but we're going to want to shock and awe. We're going to want to do something in that window that really shows that we care. So I think about onboarding a lot like dating, right? When we're connecting with a prospect and taking them through our financial plan, it's kind of like dating.

We're going to see them a lot. We're putting our best foot forward. We're trying to impress them, right? We're trying to woo them into a long-term relationship with us. Once we realize that's a great fit for both of us, and they say yes. And whether that's applying for insurances or taking applications or rolling over funds or starting a whatever, whatever with you, when they're committing to that ongoing long-term relationship, it's kind of like getting married and, you know, and everyone you've heard the term like date, your spouse, and we don't want to have this really high touch relationship. And once they commit to us, they fall into our client service model. Right. And while we know maybe seeing them every six months or once a year is a sufficient amount for what their needs are, to them. It'll feel like, oh my goodness, wow. They were all over us until they got our money. And now, gosh, now we only hear from them once a year. So we want to think about this window as this opportunity to slowly drop them into our client experience versus letting them feel like they just fell off a cliff.

and I hear that a lot from. Advisors, right? Is they do their thing, they move the money, and all of a sudden, like a month later, the client's wanting to touch base and they're like, well, what the heck? Right? And that's because we're looking at it through our lens, not through the lens of our client.

Maddie: Interesting. Okay, so that's the first 30 days, 60 days

Libby: Yeah, so simple stuff. Within that first 30 days even, is sending a really personalized, handwritten thank you card. And I know that sounds like duh, super basic, super easy, but it's one of those things that's so effective that we forget to do it or we stop doing it. And really just connecting with the client.

So you can have a template for this, right? It doesn't have to be fresh every time, but something that's using the personal intel that you've collected about that client and connecting it back to them like, Hey, we're super excited to be working with you before you know it, that dream trip to Italy that you've been, you know, ruminating on for years and we, we can't wait for you to book those tickets or, you know, sending Susie and Billy to college is going to be such a joy in five years, and we can't wait to make sure that you do that without any loans or whatever their goals are. But tying it back to that, the other thing that I love to see as kind of a table stake for me in the first 30 days is some sort of weekly concierge level email.

So, hey, here are all of the things that we've done. Here's what's still pending, here's what we're working on. Here's if we need anything from you because I can remember. I could remember my first, I and I, I tell this story in, in my book, but I could remember my first million dollar case and I ended up losing it because of our onboarding process and some mistakes that we made.

But one of the, one of the things I can specifically remember is his name was Matt, and I can remember Matt emailing me and being like, okay, so what now? Like, what's next? I saw my money left Fidelity. What happens now? When does it get to you? Oh my gosh, I got this check in the mail. Am I supposed to cash this?

Is this going to, you know, is this made out to like realizing like, okay, we need to be really clear that the human brain is wired to want to know what to expect next, and it's. Our job to facilitate, Hey, here's exactly what's going to happen, here's what we need from you. Even if it's repeating it every single week until the stuff happens.

But I can remember the money had left Fidelity, and so for this guy, the money's gone, right? It's just in mid-air. He doesn't know exactly what's happening. And while we had told him verbally, Hey, you're going to get a check in the mail and we're going to give you an envelope and you'll put the check in there and you'll overnight it, and yada, yada yada.

Right? That was weeks ago. So for him, that, that's ancient history. And so it's our job to stay ahead of that and to stay on top of it and stay top of mind like, Hey, this is done. We're waiting on this. We're consolidating these things, and here's what we, we need nothing from you, but we just want to keep you apprised of where your million dollar check is at.

Maddie: Wow. So some of these steps, I mean, seem so light bulb moment, like, of course we should be doing this in, in our practices. But I'm wondering, Libby, do you have this like in your CRM, I mean, what, how granular do you get with repeating some of these processes with clients?

Libby: in, in my perfect world, everybody would have an SOP or a standard operating procedure that granularly has all of these details in it and that it's in an accompanying workflow that creates these tasks and checklists. Because what happens is, is as an advisor, right, especially when you're new and you're just getting started, you are it right?

You might not even have a team member that's helping you, so it all lives in your head. Well, with this particular client, everything lived in my head and it lived in the head of my assistant. And we forgot to give him the envelope that we said we were going to give him, and it didn't have, so he didn't have the overnight envelope.

So instead he, he got it and we're like, oh, shoot. Right. We were supposed to give you this envelope. Right. Kind of strike one. They're still in this window where like, oh gosh, I hope I made the right decision. There is a lot of research that any purchase over $3,000 that there is a significant amount of buyer's remorse.

It's a chemical reaction where as soon as we say yes to something, we start filling out the paperwork. We're immediately like. Oh my gosh, did I make the right call? Did I do enough research on this car? Did I think through all of this stuff with this advisor? Is it really going to be better than I expected?

So for, so for the same guy, for Matt, we had forgotten to give this envelope because we were just doing the process out of our heads and my assistant that day. It skipped her mind when he was leaving the office and never, it wasn't in a workflow. We didn't check it off. It wasn't sitting there top of mind.

So he got, he put the check in his car, he. Drove it over to, we're like, okay, just bring it over to the office. We'll take care of it. While he's driving to our office, he got on the highway and had his windows down. The check flew out the window and onto the side of the highway. So he had a check for over a million dollars from Fidelity, and he's, he had to pull over and get out of his car, and he's out there on the side of the highway like a convict, looking for trash, right, looking for this million dollar check, which he never finds.

So you can imagine how happy he is with us right in this moment.

Maddie: Oh, this is like worst case

Libby: You can, you cannot make this stuff up. it was because we didn't follow this process, right? We, it lived in our heads. And so of course, like when I say like, okay, our processes, were always making sure like, okay, how do we make sure that that does not happen again? How do we make sure if it's a fidelity rollover, that they have this stupid envelope and it's not going anywhere and it's not flying out the window, they're not having to drive it over.

And so by having a detailed workflow where it was step by step, and that way too, if someone's on vacation, I mean, I can remember my director of operations, she was pregnant and she had her baby like a month and a half early. And we, we, my team and I, we got this check in the mail and we were just like.

Oh God, what do we do with it? Can we shred it? Can we pretend we didn't get it? We have to blotter this, or there's something. And we were able to just go into the workflows and literally follow the step by step while none of us had ever done it before. 'cause she was the one that handled every check that came into our office, you know, we were able to blotter it and send it to the appropriate department and trigger the correct email to the client because we had it documented step by step.

Maddie: Beautiful. How frequently do you encourage advisors to review their processes and with lenses in mind?

Libby: Yeah, well, so I always kinda look at process as a scale of one to five. So one being like I'm winging it every time. I kind of know what I'm doing, like I know what to do, but it's not written down or documented anywhere, all the way up to a five, which is, it's documented, it's sop, there's screenshots, there's videos, there's workflows, there's checklists.

It's step by step, and we've really looked at it through the lens of client experience and it's. Super elevated, and it's really, really hard to go from a one to a five, right? So for me, if you're just starting out, it's just get it down on paper, start documenting it, and then intentionally revisit that process and continue to try to elevate it to a five.

Once we've got it the way we want it, we do want to, and processes are weird because we want to memorialize 'em, right? We don't want them to always, we don't want our processes to always be in process where we're constantly tinkering and constantly changing. So for me. I love advisors to start the documenting process and then every six months come back and see, can I make this one a two?

Can I make this two a three? And then once we hit a five, go ahead and memorialize it, but make sure you're revisiting it at least every other year to see if there's a way to make it just incrementally better. Or if there's a new tool or new AI or something that allow you to, to deliver that same level of service better, faster, cheaper, or easier.

Maddie: Hmm, great, great advice. Okay, so we're, we're writing handwritten cards. You're, you're encouraging people to, to document things when. The client slowly begins to fall into the actual client experience, the standard client experience. What's that transition like and what kind of notification are you letting the client have around?

Now we're going to begin our real cadence together.

Libby: Well, so one of my favorite things is during this onboarding, in that second window where we're surprising and delighting, we want to do what we would call like a formal onboarding meeting. And this could be done virtually, and it doesn't take a ton of time. But in that formal onboarding meeting, we are sitting down with our client and we're getting them super functional to work with us, right?

We're trying to preemptively think through. All of the issues that could potentially arise. Not being able to get into their online portal, not being able to find their tax documents, not understanding how to create nicknames on their accounts or to download the app or anything that they could potentially, the wrong banking, not having the right authorizations on file.

We'd like to do this formal onboarding meeting. Where we sit down and we show them, here's how we're going to, instead of giving you a to-do list, right? So when we're thinking about this through the lens of client experience, instead of me giving you, Maddie, hey, here's this big giant to-do list of all of the stuff that I want you to do, and you're like, okay, great.

I'm really busy. I'll do this on Saturday morning. Then Saturday morning comes and you sit down and you start to work on this to-do list, and the first thing is to log into the new portal and create your Longline account. Well, to log into this online account you need. Say so for us, if we had this member ID number that our clients could never find, even though we had emailed it to them, so now they're sitting there going, well, shoot, I can't get this project done.

I have to email Libby, get my member ID, and I'll have to come back to this on Monday. Well, of course Monday we respond and they're super busy and they're not going to get to it till next Saturday. It's just one of those little irritations, one of those little things. So we suggest having a formal onboarding meeting where you sit down with a client virtually in person, be like, let's create your online portal right now.

Okay, great. Now that you're in, let me show you how to navigate around it. Let's go ahead and create those nicknames. Let's set you up for eDelivery. Let's make sure your bank account is linked. Is that the bank thing? Is that the bank that you want on file? Great. Let's make sure you've got your will loaded into here if that's, if you have estate planning stuff, making sure they've got it.

Let's go ahead and get that app downloaded on your phone. Let's get you logged in. You know, being able to walk them through that is something. Probably no other advisor had ever done for them. And in that formal onboarding meeting, to answer your question, one of the things that I love is for our advisors to have what we call the expectations of our engagement.

And this is where we lay out the expectations with our clients so that they fully understand because expectations are the death of gratitude, right? So they're expecting to hear from you. Once a month, or every time the market moves 400 points or this or that, and we're not delivering on that, it's because we have this misalignment and expectations.

So we love for advisors to have their own expectations of our engagement document that can go through things like, here's how to best communicate with our office. We use a team email. Here's when you can expect a response. When you call into the office, whoever answers the phone, give them as much detail as humanly possible about your questions so that when Libby or Lori or whoever calls you back, they can have the answers ready to go versus playing phone tag with you, right?

Because we've all had that experience where. A client calls in and they're like, oh, I have to talk to Libby. And then you call them back and they're not available. Then they call you back and then you call them back and they're like, oh, I just need to change my beneficiary. And you're like, oh my goodness.

Somebody else could have taken care of that for you days ago, right? Or, okay, well great, great question. Now I have to go do a bunch of research and let's play phone tag again so that I can answer that question for you. So just being able to lay out expectations and in that, including what the service model looks like and where you're going to end up.

So maybe it's a slow drip. Like let's say you meet with clients once a year to do a strategy session instead of in that first year, just saying, we'll see you in a year. Kind of like it feels again, like, well, okay babe, I'm just going to take you out to dinner on your birthday, you know, or just on our anniversary.

So maybe that first year you meet with them twice. Instead of just the one time, or let's say you normally are going to meet with them twice a year, maybe that first year we're going to meet with them three times to slowly drop them into that ongoing or that long-term model. But we want to be really intentional about that first 100 days and making sure that there's a bunch of really professional touch points that are personalized, customized to that client, but make them really realize that this experience is not going to be like anything they've ever experienced at any other financial advisor.

The data shows us that if we can get this first 100 days of the relationship right, that there's a disproportionate relationship to the longevity of the client relationship. Meaning if we crush it in the first 100 days, the clients stay longer, the lifetime value. Of a client is significantly higher.

They become literally lifelong clients. But the crazy statistic is, is the number of clients that produce referrals within the first 90 to 100 days. So when we were doing this in our business and we went through this huge shift, we were shocked because I grew up in an industry where you had to provide value and you had to demonstrate your value for a very extended period of time before you could even think about asking for referrals or mentioning referrals. And when we made all of these shifts, and I've seen it happen over and over and over again with advisors that all of a sudden they're getting these referrals within the first couple months of the relationship when they feel like, gosh, I haven't really even done anything yet.

Maddie: Fascinating. And I, I could see from a consumer standpoint why that happens, especially if, if all the touchpoints are happening that it's top of mind. You're excited, you want to talk to your friends and family about what you're working on. And it's so easy to say, I've got this great advisor, Libby and make the referral early on.

Um. That'd be very, very cool. These engagement standards we talk a lot about at XYPN as well and in terms of setting up the boundaries for the advisor too, and in terms of like what they can expect that, you know, if you do call at two in the morning, you may not answer and things like that. And so do you have anything on that side of, of, for advisors to be able to effectively protect themselves a bit with those standards?

Libby: Absolutely. This is where the expectations of our engagement document comes into play. And a and a lot of our advisors just deliver this document and go through it with their clients. Some even have them sign it like it's, hey, like this is a contract that we're talking about, or like mutually agreeing to these terms, if you will.

And in there they talk about like, here are our office hours. Here's when we're open, here's when we're not open. Here's like, so in my, in my example, our entire office was closed every single Friday. Right? And so we needed to let clients know, like, okay. There. One thing I love about financial planning is there's not a lot of life threatening real financial planning emergencies, right?

So the vast majority of things can wait until Monday. However, if you have an absolute financial planning emergency, here's what you can do, right? And so letting 'em know that we're not going to be checking voicemails on Friday, even though sometimes my team members would come in and make up time on those days, we're not going to be answering the phone.

The door's not going to be unlocked. You, you cannot come. Friday at 3:00 PM and expect us to be here and here, but here's when you can expect us to be there. We work extended days, the other days of the week or whatever. Same thing with like business owners and tax season, like. We, if you need to make a contribution to your sep IRA, that does not happen April 15th at 5:30 PM right?

Like, these are the expectations. We need everything a week in advance. We cannot your, you know, your poor planning is not our emergency. And here's how we're going to, our deadlines for business processing for year end, or our deadlines for business processing for tax season.

Maddie: Mm-hmm. Very helpful. And just one clarifying question. How much of this first hundred days are you discussing with the clients during your sales process? Like are you explaining it as a different period of the relationship

Libby: No. I mean, we try, I think- the predecessor to having a really, really good onboarding process is to have a really killer prospect to client process, right? And in that exhibiting those same qualities, that same professionalism, that same surprise and delight, the same shock and awe, that then trickles over.

And we want to build the desire for those clients to work with us long term so that we have to have that process, which is kind of its own beast buttoned up. And I think just exhibiting those same qualities. Now, we would talk about what you can expect in the first 100 days when we made the close, like, okay, here's what we're going to do.

We're going to have this formal onboarding meeting. We're going to walk you through the portal. We're going to show you how to log in, we're going to take you through, we're going to handhold every single step of the way and make sure it's the easiest transaction that you've ever completed. But a lot of it, we kind of kept close to our US because we wanted it to be a surprise.

We wanted them to get something in the mail or to receive a small gift from us, or personalized emails, you know, to check in.

Maddie: Hmm. Great. Listeners, I hope you've all been taking notes. Libby is, is such a fountain of information for you and inspiration of how you can redesign, and design your onboarding process. But Libby, you've got a lot going on and I know you've got a book coming out. And I'd love for you just to share with the listeners about what you've got working in the background.

Libby: Yeah. Yeah. Well, so this has been one of mine. I mean, I love all of the processes, but I think onboarding for me is one of my favorite processes to talk about, because you don't need a big budget. You don't need a lot of fancy software to elevate this experience. And it's one of those things that when you do it, you start to see the impact and the results literally immediately.

Right. Like if we can see. Referrals, like high quality referrals coming in within the first 90 days. The impact is so real and it's one of those processes that as I've coached over the last 10 years, advisors into, into doing the, the feedback is just like, oh my gosh, that was one of the best and easiest things for us to change.

So I love it as sort of that, you know, I hate to use those, like corporate terms, but it's low hanging fruit for most advisors undergoing. Some of the other processes are really arduous - it's a project we're onboarding. I feel like you can knock it out in a couple of hours if you have tools and templates in front of you.

So it's been one of my favorite things to speak on. Whenever I deliver it as a keynote, it always gets, you know, a five out of five rating, so I've just copied. I've been really particularly passionate about educating advisors that there is, like if we're thinking about onboarding as just doing paperwork, we're totally missing this golden opportunity with our clients.

So we have a book on the first 90 days that will be coming out here, hopefully in mid-April to early May. And then we've designed a course to go along with it. So for advisors that. Read the book or want to just go ahead and get samples and examples and videos of literally how to walk people through it, how to talk about it, how to have these formal onboarding meetings, some other really simple to implement ideas.

It's, it's just filled with, it's basically me having like word vomit of different things that you can do, just like you could try this or you could do that for a couple hours.

Maddie: Great. Oh, I love that. That's, that's what I think so many people are craving is like what are just some of the examples that can then get their mind moving towards

Libby: Right, like, just gimme a list and let me pick from it, right? Gimme some super tactical stuff that I could do tomorrow. And don't make me start from scratch. I'm a huge believer in there's nothing worse than sitting down and staring at a blank piece of paper. So here's three or four different examples of the expectations of our engagement.

Here's all of the things that you could put in it. Now, pick and choose what works for you.

Maddie: Hmm. And I love that. and thank you Libby, for talking about how it's just not that big of a financial investment to humanize and make your onboarding experience a totally memorable one, that, that could ultimately return with referrals. Uh, 'cause I. As we know, our listeners and many of our new XYPN members are looking for ways to keep costs low, and that's the reality of the first year in business.

So, Libby, it is so fun to talk to you and I wish we had multiple hours to go through all of your processes, but we'll attach lots of content and ways to get in touch with Libby in our show notes. But, Libby, any final words of wisdom to the folks who maybe are listening, maybe who haven't left their big broker dealer yet, that are thinking about starting their own firm?

Any advice for them?

Libby: Yeah. Really the biggest thing for me is really putting blinders on. Like we want to be aware. I think one of the hardest parts about being an advisor today is that we have access to. So much information. We all know what Matt's over there doing and what Andy's over here doing. And we listen to podcasts and we take in books and we take in information like crazy and then we don't do a whole lot with it.

And so for me, I love challenging advisors to figure out what is their way. While it's great that all of these other advisors are out there showing what they're doing, it often gives us a lot of imposter syndrome. And knowing that if you're the type of person that's. Listening to this podcast if you went out on your own because you want the autonomy to build something the way that you want it to be.

You are already probably your B+ work is probably most advisors A+ work on their best day. So you're already ahead of the, but stop taking in and start just doing, put pen to paper. Even if you start messy, you can always come back and make it fancy later.

Maddie: Well said, Libby, thank you so much and I look forward to continuing the conversation at some point.

Libby: Oh, well, thanks so much. As always. I love being here and I love chatting with you.