021: Building Successful CPA Partnerships: Redefining the Advisor-CPA Relationship with Anton Anderson

Want to revolutionize your advisory business? Join us as we sit down with Anton Anderson, CEO of Elite Resource Team, who shares his unique approach to forming strategic partnerships with CPAs. Anton, a trailblazer in his field, unpacks the profound differences between advisors and CPAs, breaking down stereotypes that have long hampered successful partnerships. With Anton's insights, we delve into understanding the CPA's mindset and how advisors can communicate value and foster trust.

In our thought-provoking conversation, Anton shares how a game-changing, team-based business model can redefine the way financial services are provided to clients. Anton's business model encourages a proactive, holistic planning approach, transcending the traditional client-advisor relationship. 

We discuss Anton's concept of a "virtual family office" and its five integral areas, offering valuable advice to advisors seeking to bring value to CPAs and their very best clients.

We delve into the mechanics of maximizing CPA partnerships for advisors. By setting realistic expectations and fostering a healthy relationship, Anton believes advisors can tap into the treasure trove of opportunities. 

About our Guest: Anton Anderson is the CEO of Elite Resource Team.

You can learn more about his work at:
 https://www.elitert.com  
https://www.linkedin.com/in/antonjanderson/
https://www.antonjanderson.com/

About Your Host:  Paul G. McManus is an accomplished author and expert in helping financial professionals grow their businesses. With over eight years of experience working exclusively with financial professionals, Paul has helped his clients generate tens of millions of dollars in fees and commissions.

As the author of three books, including The Short Book Formula: A Financial Professional's Guide To Writing A Book In Six Weeks To Attract Ideal Clients, and Million Dollar Producer: The Secret Playbook For Financial Professional's To Land High-Value Clients Using LinkedIn, Paul has become a leading authority for financial professionals on using writing and LinkedIn to attract high-value clients

You can get a complimentary copy of Paul's book at: www.theshortbookformula.com

Claim your free audiobook copy at: www.theshortbookformula.com

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:32

Welcome to another episode of the Million Dollar Producers Show. Today, I'm thrilled to introduce our guest, antin Anderson, the driving force behind the Elite Resource Team. Antin has used his experience as an investor, advisor and CPA consultant to create a company that's transforming the way financial advisors and insurance agents build their businesses. Elite Resource Team focused on fostering successful partnerships with CPAs, a proven method that results in helping more people, boosting income and cutting marketing costs. I've been following Antin's work for several years now. I can tell you that the concepts and strategies he brings to the table are truly game changing. His unique approach has the potential to significantly enhance the way advisors and CPAs grow their practices. Welcome, antin. How are you doing today?

Speaker 2: 1:18

I'm doing very well, Paul. Thank you for having me, man. I'm looking forward to our conversation.

Speaker 1: 1:22

Yeah, absolutely, let's just dive into it. First question is can you give us a bit of an overview of your professional journey? It looks like you started at Smith Barney in 2003, and now you've been running as CEO Elite Resource Team for, I believe, a number of years now.

Speaker 2: 1:37

Yep, just close to nine years. So going back to 2003, smith Barney days. I was in college at the time, working almost full time for whatever reason at a young age, got bit by this bug. I thought it was wanting to be a stockbroker originally. That was like when I was a freshman in sophomore in college. That's what I wanted to do. It's probably influenced by Glenn Gary, glenn Ross and what else was back then. I just, somewhere along the way, thought that was the path I wanted to pursue.

Speaker 2: 2:04

Smith Barney was an exciting opportunity for me, which really turned out just to be making phone calls straight out of the phone book, trying to call wealthy clients and set up appointments for the big dogs in the office. I didn't really last all that long there. My dad's now retired, but both parents actually elementary school professionals. My dad was an Eagle Scout and had a couple early experiences at Smith Barney where you couldn't make up stories like this. I'll just give you one real quick. I was the top performing intern one week and the big dog in the office said okay, you get to spend five minutes with me, ask and answer me whatever question you have. I said, all right, there was one thing you could name for all of your success. What would it be? He said oh, you really want to know. Every morning, when I get to this office, I leave all my values and morals on the elevator. Wow, oh is this recorded?

Speaker 2: 2:51

What is this hidden camera? What's going on here?

Speaker 1: 2:54

This is smack me with Wolf of Wall Street. Vibes Wolf of Wall.

Speaker 2: 2:58

Street completely. It's just amazing. I left there and joined a smaller boutique firm out of Del Mar, california. They focused on a little bit more of I'll call it advanced planning for higher net worth clients. This is where I started getting introduced to the state planning concepts, tax planning concepts, working with just the very beginning for me of working with CPAs and attorneys, and learned a lot and enjoyed it.

Speaker 2: 3:28

That firm in 2000, I want to say it was 2008, shut the doors and tried to go about it on my own in the traditional sense that a couple other guys I was working. Then we were doing fish bowls at the local restaurants, we tried some radio, we did some dinner seminars, we bought a whole bunch of leads and it was just a bit of a grind. Honestly, I wasn't really. I certainly wasn't enjoying it and I don't think I was that good in that traditional advisory space. So within a year or two I started getting introduced to the concept which I originally learned at Smith Barney but I was too young, too unexperienced to really take advantage of. But the concept of advisors and CPAs working together that's the whole idea of forming strategic partnerships and if you could leverage the trust that the CPA already has with their clients and then you could help to bring the wealth management or your life insurance and annuity planning to their clients. Then you create a win-win.

Speaker 1: 4:25

And if you would just pause for a second there, because to me you say it's so simply, but I think most advisors that I work with are so struggling with that and I know we're going to get into this later in the conversation but just expand upon that. Why is it something that is thrown about as common sense way to grow your business and that disconnect of actually making that happen?

Speaker 2: 4:52

I think there's a very outdated approach and that's based on this idea of almost trading referrals like we trade baseball cards or something, when an advisor could go and give the CPA referrals and when the CPA has clients that need wealth management or insurance, they could send the referrals over to the advisor. In theory, you have a foundation of a win-win relationship there. The advisor and the CPA are so foundationally different in the way they're wired, in their motivations, in the way they serve clients, in the way they generate revenue. There's so many differences between the professionals that they really end up with this canyon of a divide. They don't understand each other's motives and they end up oftentimes taking the worst examples of those industries and then applying those stereotypes to everybody else. From the CPA's perspective, what are financial advisors? They're money hungry looking for a sale. They're salesmen just trying to get out the CPA's clients. They've seen too many bad experiences. And then, from the advisory side, oftentimes the CPAs are looked at as deal killers. This rhetoric then becomes reinforced. I think the more and more people are looking for that to be the case and unfortunately it is true.

Speaker 2: 6:19

There are professionals on both sides of the table that match that description. Unfortunately, those people set the bed for everybody else. Even the good ones, the ones that have the right intentions, are good professionals. It gets harder to form those types of relationships. So that's a big part. I think there's just such a divide of understanding between the two professionals. And then I also think it has historically been difficult to create that type of win-win relationship. It has certainly gotten a lot easier, technology has really advanced the way that we can service clients together and obviously we can certainly dive deep on that topic. But I think that's a big part of the reason. Why is you just have too big of a difference in terms of understanding between the two professionals in most situations for the relationships to flourish.

Speaker 1: 7:15

Is there a bit of a power imbalance, and what I mean by that is most advisors that I work with are always saying I want CPA relationships and I also work with a lot of CPAs and I have not heard any of them say if only I had some advisor relationships.

Speaker 2: 7:32

Yes, and part of that is not recognizing what they really mean when they say I want right.

Speaker 2: 7:40

Advisors don't want CPA relationships because they want to go golf with them or because they're great business coaches or something. What most advisors actually mean when they say that is I want the CPAs clients, I want to make money selling products or managing money to the CPAs clients, and CPAs know that. Now, on the CPA side, they might not say I'm looking for a good advisor or a good insurance professional, but what that individual can represent is something that they need, which is a better way to deliver more proactive and holistic planning to clients. They can say a better way to actually service less clients but do a better job with those clients and have it result in more profit, which can create a better work-life balance.

Speaker 1: 8:31

Let me drill down a little bit further on both of those sides. So from my perspective and I assume you agree with this is that from an advisor's perspective, there's so much value in being able to have that warm introduction from a CPA's client base versus doing traditional marketing, cold outreach, and the more advanced, the more sophisticated the solutions, the more wealth that's involved. It's really premised on trust and while marketing is great and it serves a purpose, at the end of the day one of the biggest challenges of marketing is how do you establish trust with the people who you can best invest in, and, in theory at least, with a CPA, if they have the right clientele and the right partnership, you can bypass that trust barrier and move right into offering solutions. So that's premise one. And then the premise two and I'm going to have you react to both of them is on the CPA side.

Speaker 1: 9:28

Typically they're doing a lot of tax prep, they're inundated with tax returns, they probably aspire to do more high-level work. They haven't necessarily done it, and so just between the realities of their workflow and the aspirations of freeing up their time, getting that work-life balance, getting paid more per hour for the value that they bring, there's this disconnect in terms of them achieving their goals, and so some of them are going into advising, but I think making that switch is oftentimes very challenging and complicated because it's a different skill set that they don't necessarily have. And so those are my two premises, and I'd love to have you just expand upon or react to either or both.

Speaker 2: 10:12

Here. I'll start with the second one first, which is, again, I think you're right. They're recognizing there's a problem and there's an opportunity. I use the analogy oftentimes it's the Gold Rush going from the East Coast to the West Coast. There's gold on the West. Now how do we go about tapping into that wealth or that opportunity? There's a lot of different ways. You could go in the winter, you could go in the summer, you could go north of the rocky south, whatever it is.

Speaker 2: 10:40

So one of the solutions that accountants are being driven towards or attracted to is, like you said, them going out and getting licensed or offering more advisory services themselves. I don't think that's necessarily the best way. Of course, I'm a little bit biased because my training company teaches them else otherwise, but I think what you end up having there is, as you appropriately touched on, you have somebody that's becoming a jack of all trades. They're trying to wear multiple hats because they think that's the way that they can either grow a better business, become more profitable, help their clients more and there's some truth to that but I think the better way is for them to not try to swim in multiple swim lanes, but rather stay in their lane and leverage the expertise of somebody else that already has a complimentary skill set. It's just like an advisor going out and getting the EA license and trying to offer tax returns. It's like, why are you limiting how good you're going to be at your individual craft by distracting yourself with other responsibilities? And I've used this analogy of sports before. You have a lot of kids that play in junior high school basketball, football, baseball and you get to high school. Now you start having to narrow down. Maybe you play baseball and football, but once you get into college it starts getting more rare and the pros it's pretty much unheard of. It's because the better you want to be at your craft, the more you have to focus and really do that.

Speaker 2: 12:17

So if you want to service clients, my argument would be if you love doing tax work, do tax work. Find somebody else that's going to be managing the client relationships. Find somebody else that's going to be doing the investments. Find somebody else that's going to be doing the life insurance.

Speaker 2: 12:34

But for the most part, the CPAs that I speak with or that I think resonate with more of this type of model, which I refer to as a team-based model. They'd say I really don't care if I ever do another tax return in my life. I want to solve problems and that's actually where the value is. If you think about it. People can sit behind a computer on this coast or offshore and do tax returns. So for somebody to sit down and spend the time to build a deep relationship with a client and ask the right questions and become trusted and really be that proactive and holistic planner, that's valuable. Clients are willing to pay for that a lot more than a commodity of a tax return or a financial plan or managing assets. Those are all things that I think are very much at risk if they haven't already been commoditized and replaced by technology or by offshoreing. I think the more professionals can focus on building deeper relationships with their ideal clients and leveraging the expertise of other professionals to solve the problems that the clients have, that's valuable, that's unique.

Speaker 1: 13:48

And which naturally brings up I think we have. I totally agree with everything that you've said and I would imagine any advisor listeners like yeah, I want that relationship. The question is, how do I build that? So it's not for lack of trying or lack of whatever it's how do you and this comes into where your company and the work that you do how do you bridge that chasm? How do you go from this being an aspiration to a reality?

Speaker 2: 14:16

Yeah, really good question. What I'll do is use that as an opportunity to segue back to your first question, just to finish the path right. So talked about starting out on my own. Going about building the advisory business in the traditional way ended up being introduced or reintroduced to the concept of forming partnerships with CPAs. Actually spent about two years going through half a dozen or so different training programs. The one I went deepest on was and I've learned I learned a ton from what's called Perfect Client, and it started introducing this concept of not trading referrals but actually working together as a team right? So in 2014, started a late resource team as a result of a handful of advisors at a conference hearing about some of the work and the experience or results that this business model was having and so I mentioned earlier, parents are in education and this little light bulb went off. That was just like what if, instead of being an advisor, I actually charged people to train them? That would be exciting and I would work with more than just a handful of CPAs in Southern California. Maybe one day it could be nationwide. And so that was the beginning of a late resource team in 2014.

Speaker 2: 15:27

Fast forward to today. We've trained over 1200 advisors. 90% are in the US. We've trained some in Canada, the UK and Mexico trained about 600 CPAs, or I should say the advisors we work with have partnered with over 600 CPAs, and really it's all built on this premise that if you can do a better job learning about the professional that you're looking to work with and then communicate with them in a way that actually addresses their concerns and their problems rather than just what you're looking to get out of the partnership, the two of you can create synergy with one another and deliver a better client experience to both of your books of business. So it's this concept called a team-based model.

Speaker 2: 16:13

And now going to your most recent question how do you do it? I'd say the best way you do it as an advisor is you recognize your value to a CPA or to an enrolled agent or to a tax preparer is not in your ability to manage assets. It's not in your access to a proprietary product. It's not in how much you're going to charge the clients or whether or not you use e-money versus money guide pro or write capital. Those are what I would call seat warmers or rear view cameras in a car in 2023.

Speaker 2: 16:46

Those are expected. They're table knives at a steak restaurant. So let's just assume you've got all of the basics. Now what actually allows you to bring value is for you to communicate with them in a way that demonstrates that you actually care and you actually understand what's going on in their business. As soon as you can do that, then I think you start differentiating yourself from the 12 other advisors that they've had reach out to them this month that are all trying to sell product to their clients. So it's really this shift in mindset from I'm interested in forming a relationship with you because I want to get to your clients. That's very outdated.

Speaker 1: 17:30

I think it's ineffective, because if I had a dollar, or whatever the amount is, for every advisor who came to me with ideas. Hey, I want to go on LinkedIn and I want to target CPAs and build these relationships because I got this really cool product that their clients are going to benefit from. That's 95% of what I hear from advisors and I just whether I tell them or whether I have where I say it, it's just to me I, at least internally, chuckle because it's just so ineffective knowing that there's people like you out there that actually can make that a reality. But it takes completely different mindset, I would imagine, in order to make that a reality.

Speaker 2: 18:05

Yeah, a different mindset, a different understanding, a different definition of results.

Speaker 2: 18:12

A lot of times, advisors will judge a relationship on whether or not it's successful by whether or not it's produced a new client or an annuity or assets that we're managing, and that's like looking at the golden egg and paying no attention to the goose itself.

Speaker 2: 18:27

I would say they need to change the mindset. To define success is whether or not the CPA trusts you and whether or not they are willing to allow you to become so valuable to their business that their business won't operate without you. Now that is a total different definition of success and doesn't happen in a few weeks or a couple months. Right, that takes time. So the whole approach, rather than let me get access to your clients is how about the two of us form what I call a proactive planning partnership? Okay, so it's primarily made up of the accountant and the advisor coming together. Now, those two professionals both have their own skill sets, but they're two slices of the pizza and clients, especially high net worth clients, business owners they have a much more complicated pizza than just basic tax work or basic investment work.

Speaker 2: 19:26

Okay so for anything that the clients need that are within the skill set of the accountant or the advisor, they handle it. That's the proactive planning team. That's like the first stop, and oftentimes they'll have a couple of systems and other people on their proactive planning team, but then behind them is a virtual family office. Okay, virtual family office primarily made up of five different areas, which would be tax planning not just the tax planning that a CPA does, but really more high end tax planning and state planning, long form, short term capital gains, etc. Then you have risk mitigation, which would, of course, be the life insurance, the annuities, the PNC, the commercial insurance, the captive insurance, etc.

Speaker 2: 20:11

Then you have wealth management, which could be the investment accounts, the 529s, retirement, the cryptos, the real estate, etc. Then you have legal services buy, sell agreements, trust wills, all that good stuff. Then you have business advisory services, working with business owners, helping them look at what's my company called? Sure, where's this company going? What am I KPI? Am I using any type of measurement system to track the growth and the development? So those are the five areas and the more an advisor can say. You and I, we form a proactive planning team. We bring this message of more proactive, holistic planning to our clients. Anytime there's something that's within our wheelhouse, we work together to deliver that or solve that problem.

Speaker 2: 21:00

And anytime there's something that's outside of our wheelhouse, we leverage this team of professionals I call it a virtual family office to come into our client's ecosystem. We don't refer the client out, we bring the expert in. We look and do proper due diligence to determine whether or not it's appropriate for the client. We ask the expert to give us a little bit of time. We communicate back with the client what do you think? Are you comfortable? Here's the pros, here's the cons. And then ultimately, we hold the client's hand through a complete planning process, Very different than just handing off a referral and trying to manage some money or sell a product.

Speaker 1: 21:41

Yeah, that's again trust barriers to referrals. For those reasons, that's why am I going to refer my best client to someone and then worry about the relationship how it goes. Could go poorly, could go well, and then, of course, maybe, if it goes well or poorly, what's the impact on me? So there's so many obstacles to referrals that I think this, what you described through the virtual family office, helps solve for and really is when to everybody involved.

Speaker 1: 22:12

One question that I was thinking about as you were talking a lot of this sounds almost like dating and marriage. Right, I heard you in a video that I was looking, probably on YouTube or somewhere, but, if I remember correctly, one of the things that you or your team does is really you help both the advisor and the CPR accountant have this deeper discussion. So you help facilitate that discussion in a way that possibly, left to their own devices, they may not be as able to do, which is like a marriage right, I'm here for more than just a date and this and that this is how my wife got me. She's like, hey, I'm happy to date you. Ultimately, you need to have long term potential, otherwise it's fine. Just, you're not right for me. So how do you initiate that discussion? And another part of the question, or another subset of that question, is how many of these relationships are appropriate. I'd be like this is fantastic, I want to have 10 different wives. I want to have 10 different. Cpa partnerships.

Speaker 1: 23:08

This serves me very well and I guess, realistically, if you're really having this relationship with the accountant or CPA, how do you manage that in a way that is mutually beneficial?

Speaker 2: 23:20

Yep. The two biggest things I would say for advisors to keep in mind is one it's much better to have 30 or 40 meetings with CPAs to find and narrow down the ultimately let's say, the five that you'll want to engage with, than it is to try to have five or 10 meetings and just try to fit around, peg into a square hole. So the first thing I would say for advisors listening is set expectations that you're going to meet with at least 30 CPAs and the advisors that are doing this really well, that we've trained. They've met with 50 plus CPAs because you want to quickly identify the ones that have the right mindset and are looking for this type of proactive partnership to serve their clients. It's just much better to go through more numbers than it is to try to convince and sell. So the KPIs will look like 30, 40, 50 CPA meetings that I'm having.

Speaker 2: 24:22

I could use clients to get introductions. I could use every prospect I'm sitting down to. I could use LinkedIn. I could use Google. There's a number of different. We have training documents, nine different ways to identify and contact the ideal CPA partner, but that's a handful of them right there. Then you're leading them through a meeting process where, basically, you're finding out. Do they have the right kind of mindset towards change, do they have the right kind of clients that I'd like to work with, and do the clients actually trust the CPA? We're demonstrating our understanding of the difference between the referral model and the team-based model. Then we're talking to them about some of the tools that we have available to them to help them communicate this to their clients. That's essentially a three-meeting process right, qualify, demonstrate and then tools From there.

Speaker 2: 25:10

How many CPAs or accountant relationships would be ideal? I would say, plan on having five or six. And here's the reason I used to say two or three and that's all you could handle. And that's really. If the two or three are great, we're talking LeBron James and Steph Curry. You got one, two, maybe three max.

Speaker 2: 25:31

But what ends up realistically happening is, if you go through 30, 40 meetings with CPAs, you're going to end up having five to eight that say, yes, antony, I like this model, I like you, I trust you, I'd like to work with you. Now, out of those that say yes, we're going to take them through what's called a 90-day launch period. Half of them are going to get busy, being busy, right, it's just, it's human nature, nobody likes change. They were excited and they joined the gym and then two weeks later like they're sleeping in. So out of the five to eight CPAs that say yes, there's probably going to be three or four that start making client introductions. And then, out of those three or four that start making client introductions, there's going to be one or two that are really actively, consistently making client introductions. And what I mean by that is we set the expectation that we are doing weekly meetings with the CPA. So one hour every week, same day, same time and they are introducing ideally one new client per week.

Speaker 2: 26:38

So that's the cadence of a well-performing relationship or partnership. So if you go back to your question of how many relationships is ideal, I'd say think about it like a bench, any sports team. You got a bench. You got your C players, your B players and your A players, two or three A players, two or three B players, two or three C players. That is the makeup of a well-mature, I'd say, advisory partnership.

Speaker 1: 27:09

Is there? So let's say it's five. Do the CPAs? If I want to tongue-in-cheek use the marriage analogy again, this is like a Mormon and I say this jokingly Mormon marriage where they all know that there's five wives, or is it secretive, where you don't talk about it? What's the disclosure there?

Speaker 2: 27:26

Part of that Very often.

Speaker 1: 27:27

I guess the question is about reciprocation. Right Does the CPA or accountant? Is it in their desire to get referrals to them, or is that not really where the value is?

Speaker 2: 27:39

So they're Not really where the value is. I tell advisors. So it's very open. First of all, I wouldn't try to hide the fact that you're working with other CPAs, and oftentimes it's good to have one or two clients of your own that are looking for a new proactive CPA relationship, not so you can refer them to the CPA, but to help jumpstart the partnership process right? So if I'm sitting down with you, paul, and we've had three meetings and everything so far is checking off, I'd say I actually am quite confident in what we're building here. I think there's a lot of synergy. In fact, I've already got a client. He's currently unhappy with his CPA.

Speaker 2: 28:20

I'd like to invite the client to sit down with the two of us so we can explain to him what we're building within this proactive planning team. So that way we're bringing the first client to the table. That's always a good move if you can do it, but it's only done in the context of explaining. I'm doing this, paul, because I want you to feel comfortable, kind of driving around the block once in my car, and my expectation is as long as you're comfortable with the way everything goes, we're going to identify the next client from your essentially book of business. So once we start moving there this idea of trading referrals it's almost something that people just have bought into because it's the way things used to be done, or maybe people say it should be done. But the problem with a good CPA is not that they don't have enough tax clients. I don't remember the last time, actually, I sat down with CPA and he's like I wish I had more clients.

Speaker 1: 29:16

I work with a lot of CPAs and I've yet to hear that I mean. It's always the opposite. I want fewer clients.

Speaker 2: 29:21

So exactly where are you going with? I'll put you on the spot, paul, because it's your podcast. So what is the number one problem that CPA most CPAs have?

Speaker 1: 29:29

They're inundated with. I would call B and C level clients.

Speaker 1: 29:34

They don't feel that they're providing the value that they would like to, because they're doing basic tax prep. They aspire to and I think you may have said it, it's not necessarily to be the relationship manager type person, because that may not be part of their core skill set. Oftentimes CPAs account and so this is a generalization a little bit more introverted and they're good at numbers and analyzing and problem solving, and so I think they would like to be in a place where they can bring out some of their higher level knowledge and skill sets. The way that they're comfortable with that showcases the value that they bring, without putting them into scenarios that they're not as comfortable with.

Speaker 2: 30:18

Yeah, you nailed it, and the word inundated, I think, is what you used, and that's usually what I hear is it's a bottleneck, it's time, it's I'm exhausted, I'm not bringing home enough for how hard I work. So, if you think about it, what is giving them a referral really doing to the biggest problem that they're suffering from? Yeah, it's actually making it worse.

Speaker 2: 30:41

It's not making any better. So if we can appropriately explain to them that the problem isn't that they don't have enough clients, and they'll quickly admit that, as you just said, most of the CPAs you speak to, the problem is that the way they are servicing those clients creates a bottleneck or a demand of time which is not fairly or equally compensated for because it's not that valuable. So oftentimes, as you said, and I totally agree, they'll say I'd like less clients, not more. Ok, cool, then why don't you just fire half your clients? I need the revenue, oh, ok. So now we're getting to the heart of the problem here. We have too many clients and we have a business model that doesn't appropriately generate enough revenue for you to actually eliminate some of the clients, right?

Speaker 2: 31:32

Or for you to appropriately grow to service those clients. So my value proposition to a CPA is not that I'm going to bring them more referrals. My value proposition is, rather than having the 500 clients and having an average value per client of $500, what if you had 200 clients but your average revenue per client was $2,000? Right Now we have significantly less clients, significantly more revenue. Then, of course, the question is, how would you do that? That's called leverage. We're leveraging the expertise of a more profitable way to deliver value to clients and the expertise of other professionals. It gets back to the whole Dan Sullivan who, not how concept, but it's very possible, it's very doable and that's why me trading referrals is really not that important of a part of the partnership process and why I think advisors start on the wrong foot even to begin with. I was actually speaking to an advisor earlier today. He was like I've probably referred to the CPA to 15 clients over the years. That doesn't mean that.

Speaker 1: 32:40

That doesn't mean what you think it means, yeah, I was going to joke him. If anything, he's probably upset. I'm referring me more clients, my goodness.

Speaker 2: 32:48

It's this awkward Oftentimes they'll still take the clients because they are operating from a scarcity mentality, like I need to take more clients because I need more revenue, but at the same time it's making the problems worse and they're just a hamster kind of stuff. I don't mean that as it sounds. I can think of.

Speaker 1: 33:05

I'm always referring clients and they feel a lack of reciprocity. But I think, if you look under the dynamic I think you're articulating it very well it reminds me of this whole Minerva from Venus women are from larger.

Speaker 1: 33:15

Yeah, you're not from Mars, and women are from Backwards, but you're speaking really two different languages and your intent on your own Goals, but you really have to. I think of you almost as just as I'm having this conversation with you. You're almost like a matchmaking service. You're helping the right people come together, but you're also helping them speak to each other in a way that meets both of their needs and builds confidence.

Speaker 2: 33:38

Yeah, I think that's true. And then giving them the tools and the model for their relationship to flourish, yeah. So help them understand one another better, because understanding, I think, is the foundation of a relationship. And once they understand one another better, shall we do something slightly different that clients find more valuable and we find more profitable?

Speaker 1: 34:02

It sounds like win-win.

Speaker 1: 34:04

To play quote-unquote devil's advocate for a second. Why wouldn't an advisor want to embrace this? From everything that I understand and know, it seems like this is a natural, obvious thing to do that you'd want to do. What's? Is it just lock of awareness? I don't think there's a lot of competition out there doing specifically what you do At least, I'm not personally. I hear random things, but to me you guys seem to have captured very well, or you're a leader in this specific space, and so why would an advisor not want to do this with you?

Speaker 2: 34:39

I think we are.

Speaker 2: 34:40

We're swimming upstream on a traditional industry or against a traditional industry that measures things on dollars and short-term profit or output. So a lot of advisors they look at something as with too short of a runway to be willing to put in the amount of time to foster a relationship. It's I use the analogy often of an orange tree, and I grew up here in San Diego and my neighbor used to have this big, beautiful orange tree that always had hundreds of oranges on it. But when you do the research you realize it takes an orange tree from the point of a seed to the point of it producing its first orange. It's roughly two years. Okay, so most advisors are out there and they've either structured their business in a way or their lifestyle in a way where they can't wait to eat. That's the buying, the leads, that's the dinner seminars, that's like the urgency of closing business Instead of becoming a farmer. They have to run over to the supermarket and just pay full price for oranges, but the next day they have to do the same thing and the same thing and the same thing. On the other hand, if you are willing to put in the time to grow something like this, you fertilize it and make sure it gets proper water. Once it starts producing it's a little bit slow, but then there starts coming from some fruit. An adult orange tree produces up to 400 oranges a year and can last to be 100 years old.

Speaker 2: 36:15

So it and I'm not saying a CPA partnership should take two years to produce fruit. That's way too long in this day and age. But it's going to be longer than buying leads or doing dinner seminars. And so it messes with advisors' heads. They start freaking out quickly because they don't realize that it's going to quote unquote be as hard as it is. They just think this totally makes sense.

Speaker 2: 36:42

Why wouldn't a CPA sit down or why wouldn't a CPA partner with me? We try to be very transparent about that, which is why I'm talking about it openly on a podcast. If you are going to go this path, honestly, I think it's unparalleled in terms of the opportunity and the ability to work with better clients, solve bigger problems and really enjoy the work you're doing. I think it's exceptional, but you have to approach it from the mindset of making an investment, of time building relationships, and it's a marathon more than a sprint, if I can communicate that well and an advisor can believe me and put in the work, then I think it becomes, in my opinion, the best opportunity to grow upstream and improve the client base and have a more enjoyable, fruitful, sustainable business model. I don't know really. There's anything else that matches it.

Speaker 1: 37:39

No, and I can relate a lot because I work with a ton of advisors and I see the same thing, which is, when people initially come to me, the first thing they're focused on is leads. How do I get leads, how do I get appointments? And I understand and get it. By the same token, what I see them doing in many cases, having worked with them over time and just seeing the industry and it's exactly what you said is that one, they're paying a huge premium for leads but secondly, the quality of leads. They're competing in this marketplace of being a commodity. They're out there trying to get my message out, sell, get my brochure out.

Speaker 1: 38:18

I can convince someone and it's definition of insanity which is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. Part of my own journey in terms of my own company more clients, more fun and helping advisors and now really financial professionals more broadly, including CPAs and accountants and tax attorneys and everyone really in the space is to start by helping them write and publish a book. And it's really this parallel concept, right? It's that huge synergy between the two.

Speaker 1: 38:51

It doesn't necessarily produce immediate results, although it can, and there's techniques that we help them do to try to get the return on investment right away. But ultimately we work with people for about six to 12 weeks to get them to write, publish and then become an author, and then it becomes the basis of their marketing, their marketing, their relationships, their sales conversion, potentially the CPA relationships, because there's so much more leverage that they have as an author versus going out without that status as an author right.

Speaker 1: 39:27

But, then, of course, the same thing. It's like what's my ROI in three months? Could be zero. We can try to mitigate that, but what should really? The better question is what's your ROI over five years and what's the quality of your life over the same five years? Are you actually doing the work that you would love to do working with those bigger accounts and more problem solving, or whatever it is that you would dream of doing, or staying stuck in the rut of where you are today, simply almost like Groundhog Day, repeating the same thing over and over? Now I'm going to do something, which is you, graciously, have invited me to speak at your upcoming event this month, and I don't know if this will be released before or after that, but I'd love to get your thoughts in terms of where you see what you do in terms of CPA partnerships and the work that you do, and what I do in terms of helping advisors and financial professionals write and publish a book, and where you see that synergy happening.

Speaker 2: 40:28

Love it. Yeah, very good question. So in my mind, the partnership between the advisor and the accountant always makes so much sense. It's a natural one and it really just forms the foundation to serve better clients and serve clients in a better way.

Speaker 2: 40:45

The something like or I should say specifically to your question a book. It magnifies that partnership. What it does is it has now a strong foundation to communicate, via a book, the value proposition that a professional or I think there's a huge opportunity for a CPA and an advisor to write a co-author, a book together and for them to then use that as the vehicle that this message is getting out to. So you have the current client base and, let's say, we're approaching the top 20% of their clients and we're going to be doing more product and holistic planning. We're bringing them through client experience that they've never had in the past. Each of those clients should get a copy of the book, not only for themselves, but now when they're talking to their buddies about this proactive planning process. They just went through and here's a book that my CPA wrote, here's a book that my advisor wrote, or here's a book that they wrote together.

Speaker 1: 41:50

Yeah, I think there's so much synergy there for the reasons that you stated. And just imagine, you have 500 clients that are with the accountant and you're trying to initiate this relationship and just from that perspective of leverage and quickly establishing, from the CPA's perspective, quickly establishing what you're doing, what your goal is, what your vision is, as well as introducing the person who you've decided to work with and why, of course, and then all the other things that we've talked about the virtual family office and the synergy that benefits the clients but something that you package, you create, and it's really, I always think of books. I'm a marketing person, right, I'm not a literary person, I'm a marketing person. So I think of books from a marketing perspective and I call it it's a sales letter in disguise, right? So if I were to like have my best talking points and thought it out and all these things, this is what it would be. Of course, it would be framed as educational, not as salesy, but really all of my best materials embedded in it, right Versus, just off the cuff and trying to think about the value proposition. And so it becomes your sales letter in disguise.

Speaker 1: 42:52

That really kicks off the relationship, which is then inherently just easy to give to people. Everyone, all of your existing clients, should get a copy. We're doing audiobooks because people might read, they might listen, they might do it later. So, whatever is their preferred consumption vehicle, you can create immediate awareness, immediate value proposition and then, beyond that, just the referral aspect. But it's the easiest way to give a referral, to the extent that you're doing referrals versus what we're talking about to bring more people on. Okay, here's a book. It's not threatening, it's not all. You want to sell me something? No, would I like to save taxes, of course? Great, here's a book that my CP and I just wrote together and take a look and let me know what you think. I think it's like synergy built on synergy that you and I are discussing here.

Speaker 2: 43:38

Yeah, and as a side of conversation, just for anybody listening, ironically, paul and I have already talked and we're moving forward with writing a book with him and we're probably involving John Cutten, and the synergy continues. But the what I would say is what you just shared completely echoed an experience I had when we started Elite Resource Team, which was it took me about three years to realize it doesn't matter how good your value proposition is If nobody knows about it. We went from making less than a hundred grand, I think maybe the third year we were at like 156 grand and then we went from that to 1.2 million in one year and then 2 million and then three plus, and the whole thing that I realized was marketing. The value proposition has been the same. It's just how do you package, how do you communicate and how do you get the message out there.

Speaker 1: 44:37

No, no, I think I told you that we're going to do 30 to 45 minutes and I think we're approaching an hour, because I've just enjoyed this conversation so much I'd like to continue indefinitely, but I know that you're a busy guy and you have responsibilities. So just in segwaying to wrapping up our conversation, a couple questions. First, is there any topic that we haven't discussed that you think our audience should know, should be aware of? I think we've covered a quite a broad range, but is there anything that stands out to you as something that you want people to know about?

Speaker 2: 45:12

Just a quick takeaway I would say is we often times, for whatever reason, think without even realizing we think it that business is one-on-one sport. It's one-on-one basketball and no rules are written to say it is. You can have a team behind you. So I will often say this to advisors or to CPAs that think they're exceptional. And I say you take Michael Jordan, best basketball player arguably of the time, when he was on the bulls, do you think he would have beat the pistons by himself? And I don't say that to be I don't say it to be cocky, but I tell him it doesn't matter how much better you are as an advisor than me, or how much more about the tax code I will out deliver to a client because I have a team. There's just there's no way you can compete with my 50 advanced planning experts. It's just not so. Business is not one-on-one sport. It's really leveraging a team of professionals as the way that I think you deliver the best value overall to clients and you win better clients.

Speaker 1: 46:22

I have to add to that, to extend upon your analogy of Michael Jordan, I think. In fact, when he was still doing basketball, he or I think he retired, because then he went and wanted to test his skills, as in baseball I forget what it was, it was the minor leagues. He's a top notch athlete, world class, obviously best in sport, and he wanted to see if those same skills transferred over to another sport. And, from memory at least, whatever I recollect is that he was a at best subpar minor leaguer. Right, because the skills don't translate. And so I think, if anything, just what you're saying about the advisor and their role and their skillset, the CPA or accountant and their role and their skillset when you bring those together, you can really create this championship team.

Speaker 1: 47:05

And so final question for someone that's listening to this Actually, your question is do you work with advisors and CPAs in terms of CPAs reaching out to you for help, or is it?

Speaker 2: 47:15

the advisor. If CPAs reach out for us for help, which does happen, we typically will introduce them to an advisor that we have a good relationship with, we've been working with and has gone through our training.

Speaker 1: 47:26

So your client tells primarily financial advisors, wealth managers, life insurance agents. Am I missing anyone there? That's correct, okay. So for those people, they've listened to this conversation and I'm telling you I've been following this guy for a number of years now and if you're an advisor and you've not yet reached out and looked into services, you're doing yourself a disservice. So for that person who's listening to this and wants to learn more, what's the best path to doing so?

Speaker 2: 47:52

Yep. So our general company website, elitert, as in resource team elitertcom my personal page is just antanjandersoncom and then we have 50, 60 YouTube videos that are out there for free, where I'm just doing my best to communicate this concept and deliver value, Because I think it is early, early in this game. Here. I think the shifts in the overall marketplace are only going to make collaboration more powerful and more valuable. So I briefly like to just put my flag in the ground and say whether you pay us or you just follow the material, however I can help, I'm happy to help, but we need to move towards collaboration.

Speaker 1: 48:39

My company is more clients, more fun. That just reflects my own values At the end of the day, to your point, one of the things that I enjoy is that team approach. I would probably off myself if I was just sitting at a home all day by myself and wasn't able to have colleagues and partners and approach clients in a team fashion. I think it's so powerful what you're doing and I really appreciate your time today. I look forward to actually meeting you in person in a few weeks from now.

Speaker 2: 49:07

I look forward to it as well, and thank you again for having me on my pleasure.