Stop Chasing Prospects. Start Solving the Right Problems

Hello and welcome to the Full Advisor Coaching Podcast. I’m your host Kristen Herod and today is an exciting day for

me because I get to bring on two gentlemen who I’ve had the pleasure of

working with. Uh we’ve worked together for about two years and it’s just exciting for me to be able to share

their story as one of a big transition that they’ve made over a number of years

and I’m excited to bring light on that today. Um, today I will be talking to

John Schwab and John Hongrren who are both partners at Freedom Financial Partners which is an independent RAA

based in the Twin Cities. Welcome John and John. Good to have you here and good to see you.

Yeah, good to see you as well and thanks for having us. Yeah, thanks for having Oh yeah, absolutely. Uh before we get

into it, let’s just give our listeners a little context on uh you know, how you got into this business or um started

your business and then we’ll kind of take it from there and and unpack your story and just what what’s been going on

for you over the last few years. Yeah. So, we went independent um 13

years ago. And I guess by independent, we’re going to get to various iterations of independence, I think, during our conversation today. But

yeah, started Freedom Financial Partners um as an entity um 13 years ago and uh we were

part of a uh a broker dealer at the time and uh essentially you know we’ve kind

of seen you know multiple iterations of our business. Eventually we ended up going uh the RAIA route but we were

under a corporate RAIA and we’re going to talk about that in a few minutes. And then um from there uh we did go fully

independent to be our own RAIA about uh two years ago. So it’s been um yeah kind

of an evolution of our business over the last 13 years and we’re really excited for where things go from here.

Oh, great. And John Homegrren, how did you get into the business or how did you get paired up with John?

Sure. Sure. I was going to say John and I both have uh our roots. We’re we’ve both worked for United Capital or been

affiliated with United Capital in our career. So, [snorts] when I was looking to move to the Twin Cities area 5 years

ago, it was such a natural fit with uh him. And we’ve really enjoyed building

the business over the last five years. Fortunately, our third partner is not named John, but Trevor. So, and the

three of us really enjoy working together. And I think you’ll find in in this episode a

unique part about Freedom Financial is, you know, we enjoy having a small footprint, but partnering with some of

the best uh vendors, partners within this industry to help us build along the

way. Yes. Great. Yeah. And and you guys are just fun to work with, frankly. I mean,

I just love I I had for the listeners, I’ve had the pleasure I’ve worked with John and John. I worked for them for the

past two years and I was able to watch them go through this transition. Uh we

partnered up right when you made that transition out of the corporate into the fully independent. So, um I’ve been able

to see what that looks like, but to set the context, I’d love it if you could

give us uh give the listeners just a snapshot of what it was like inside a corporate RA and like what was really

good about that. like what worked well like once you moved out of the BD and you’re in a corporate RA what was what

was um that structure doing for you? Yeah. So I I I think some of the things that that were good about being inside

the corporate RA, they come with things like you’ve got compliance, right? Yeah.

You’ve got some, you know, offtheshelf marketing if you decide that you want

that. There’s a tech stack that you can utilize, right? They have trading platforms. And so there’s a lot of

things that that you can use. And I think as we were building our business,

a lot of those things were helpful. Um, but over time, as we grew and the

business started just to become, I think, more of what we wanted it to become, we needed it to be more more

customized and more specialized to who we wanted to be. And so I think

ultimately we just got to a point where it made sense to to go outside of that

structure of the corporate RAIA and just be able to do things I guess a little bit more as as we saw fit.

Right. Right. John, I see John Homegrren, I see you nodding your head. What what would you add on to that?

No, I’d 100% agree with John. I think there’s a size that Freedom Financial was at say 5 years ago where it made a

lot of sense financially for us to partner with a lot of these offthe-shelf solutions and then yeah you start to get

to the size and you have the ability to bring in more resources and kind of build it you know how you want to at the

end of the day which was the direction John was going with it. Yeah. When you were leaving and making

that transition what were you afraid of giving up? You know, I think I think the the first thing a lot of people bring up

is, you know, that the compliance aspect to our business is getting more and more

complicated and there’s a degree of comfort. You know, if the SEC comes

knocking on our door where you have all of the corporate RAA resources behind you. So, I think you have to have the

right people within the org to take that independent step. Like at the end of the day, you have to have a chief compliance

officer, right? You have to have somebody that can coordinate some of these outside resources. So when

I had joined the firm, it was kind of a natural fit and that we had some of those internal resources to evaluate a

move like that. Hey there, it’s Kristen. Quick break. If

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And I definitely have seen in working with you um you know you both kind of fill different roles with um John

Schwabach doing you know the client a lot of the client facing work and engaging um out in the community and

being you know more of the face behind of with along with Trevor your partner

uh the other partner um in that role and then John Hongren being uh running everything behind the scenes the COO

role. So, um, it’s interesting. Um, it’s, I mean, it’s great to see both of

you in with that dynamic because I know it’s kind of, uh, in the EOS terms, a lot of visionary integrator type of role

too, which comes up a lot when I’m working with firms, you know, uh, very common to have those two different types

personalities. How did that help you with your with making this transition? I

imagine it had a pretty pretty helpful impact on that. Oh, absolutely. I mean, I I look back,

you know, five years ago before John, you know, came in to uh to Freedom

Financial, we wouldn’t have been ready operationally to do something like this.

John came from a from a bigger firm and he had kind of been down this journey of

working with a firm that, you know, was was fully independent. And what does that really look like? what does it take

to run a business like that? And so I think we had to, you know, go through a

few stages with him coming in and kind of telling us like, guys, here’s sort of where you need to go next, where you

need to go next. And ultimately, he I think was very instrumental in helping Trevor and I just get very comfortable

that, yeah, we can do this, right? We have the team to do it because quite

frankly, we just weren’t there before. And I think that was, you know, probably

for me the scariest thing is now you’re going to take on more compliance, let’s

call it burden, operational burden, and you just have to be ready to do it. But

I think once we actually went ahead and made the decision, um, we knew it was the right decision. And having someone

who’s been there and done this with other businesses gave us a lot of

confidence that that we could successfully make that transition. Oh, that’s great. John, do you what

what’s your point of view on that? We’ve certainly heard the the the horror stories before we started on this

journey, too, of you know, you’re going to spend your entire time doing compliance. like somebody like John Schwab’s not going to be able to grow

the business because it’s going to be too complicated to run. And [laughter]

I don’t think a lot of those have been borne out with the pathway that we’ve gone. I don’t think we’re spending a ton

more time running the business than we were under the corporate RAA structure has been what we’ve realized.

Interesting. Yes. Yeah. And we’re we’ll get into some of the great I mean the freedom that it

has given you which is very exciting. But um John Schwab, I am curious because I know um as we’ll get into you you work

with business owners. Your firm focuses on working with business owners. So we’ll we’ll get into that. But um and

it’s great that you are of course business owners yourselves and now making it very relatable to the audience

also relevant. Um but John, I believe you said your father was an

entrepreneur. Is that right? Yeah. My father uh was a dentist,

started his own business basically out of dental school and ran it for almost 50 years. So I kind of grew up

Wow. around that. And my my grandfather, his name is also John Schwabach, he had a

a Texico gas station in St. Paul and ran that for many years after he returned

from uh World War II. So I just kind of you know grew up around all of that and

was able to kind of watch that happen uh during my lifetime. And so it did help I

think during these various stages of independence to have some of that experience just life experience to go

back on because it’s not always easy. I think a lot of people like, “Oh, yeah. It’s just easy to start your own

business and run it and and it there’s going to be hard times. There’s going to be challenging times.” And going into

that with some of those expectations does help. Yeah. I I think that’s really

interesting. Like was it something you always knew you wanted to eventually become like run your own business or did

you did you think perhaps oh no I’m actually we’re we’re doing we’re kind of

hanging out under this corporate RA close enough like what

yeah I I I think in the back of my mind I always knew that I wanted to to run um

my own business you know with other people of course get a great team to to help and to complement you know

hopefully what I’m able to to bring to the table. And it’s one thing that I

would say it really did change when we made the move to being fully independent

because even under a corporate RAIA, I always felt like I was more part of a building like a practice. And right now,

I really feel like we’re truly running a business, right? We’re doing this on our

own. We’re building enterprise value. And when you work with other business

owners, that’s a lot of what we talk about in the planning process is where does the business fit into your

financial plan? Because for a lot of us, it is the biggest asset. Right. Right.

And how do you continue to build enterprise value and help other business

owners do that? Yeah. And I I absolutely love that you

can trans or parlay that experience that you’re living and

carry your expertise of, you know, wealth management and financial planning to that audience. I just I love when

that comes together in that way. and and what I’m hearing is that John Homegrren by coming in and helping and having his

um systems thinking and operational focus was able to almost give you that

that sense of confidence that yeah, now is the right time that we can do this.

Um and and I’ll say uh listeners having known them for a while like watching the

play between the two of you I see how things get done and how things grow because of the different skill sets you

each bring to the table and having that sort of you know visionary integrator you know um client focused internal

focused balance that is so hard to find and when it works it works well and when

it works well it’s fantastic. So, all right. So, now you you’ve been

independent. All right. Let’s So, you went independent and I remember because, you know, we had just started working

together. So, I remember you had to kind of get through all the paperwork and do all the things. We got to get the, you

know, get through all the corporate structure and all those different things. Um, what was on your mind then?

Like, take us back there and be like, okay, where were you like what do we have to do? Like what what were you

thinking at the time? Well, as far as after we became

independent, I mean, the first thing is, you know, the first time you do billing, it’s like, is this going to work, right? we have anything [laughter] like the

biggest thing is you know you got to go through all that those first cycles of things

you know everything with compliance and then we’re an EOS business so again

we had a lot of things that were kind of working just to get through this

transition right and I I I I think for me I mean a lot of those things can be kind of draining

because I want to be out focused on working with clients and meeting with

clients and what does that next kind of iteration of our business start to look like. And so when it came up like hey we

had some marketing help before and now we don’t like what are we going to start to do about that and that became an EOSB

kind of a a rock for us to solve right for us to start to look at because it is

something that you oftentimes leave behind and what are you know how are we going to

now go into this marketplace as a fully independent firm and what’s going to

make us different than other people in the space and how do we start to talk

about that? So that’s where my head went and hence that’s how you know we got introduced to

each other. Yes, I remember getting if I’m not mistaken, John was the one who

I was gonna say John introduction. I I didn’t know you, but John John so

he did his research. He reached out. I remember having a conversation over a couple months, which was great because,

you know, we were able to go back. It was like before you made the official transition, but it was coming up. And then once you did, we were able to start

to help you get clear first and foremost on, you know, you had your brand,

Freedom Financial Partners, and and that you had you were a DBA under the other firms. So that that was out there, that

was established, but then it was like, okay, well, if we’re going to put resources behind marketing, where are we

going to direct that? because we don’t want you to fall victim to the

um try to market to everyone, right? And and I know you had had some business owners and high netw worth individuals

and kind of a a broader positioning and through iteration we we came down to um

a more specific audience targeting the business owners. Let’s talk a little bit more about how you got to that. Um, just

so people out there who are going, “Huh, we got to we got to figure this out.

What should we do?” Yeah, John, I’m trying to put ourselves back in that that mindset, you know, a

couple years ago. I’m remembering from a right from a marketing perspective, we had we

had a bunch of kind of random things kind of sitting on the shelf. And when I say that, I mean our our website was

there and functional, but it really wasn’t oriented towards the type of clients

that we wanted to attract, right? I think a lot of our marketing was just

kind of kind of random. It was making sure we communicate with our current clients, but there wasn’t a lot of

strategic thought put towards like who should we be talking to? win. John, I

know you were kind of concurrently thinking through as kind of the visionary of the firm.

Where should the business turn as we went fully independent? I think it was right around that time we were starting to talk about the business owner niche.

Yeah, we’d always worked with with business owners, but we, you know, worked with a lot of different people as

well. And I think as we kind of looked at, you know, where does this business head, you know, over time, who are we

best suited to work with? What do we want to be known for? And it just became so, I think, apparent

to us that this is who we are, right? We’re right, we’re a successful small business,

right? We we feel like we can add a lot of value by having these planning conversations with business owners.

We’ve made, you know, mistakes along the way that we can bring that experience as well. But I think more than anything,

it was just again, we started to look at ourselves more as I think not just financial planners, but

advisors to entrepreneurs and business owners, right? And we were living this

every day. So when you get into a room with a with a successful business owner,

you’re sharing a lot of the same stories because you know there’s things that just that

just consistently happen when you own a business. And so I think that was where it was just something that became again

really apparent. This is the direction that we need to go and how do we start to talk about this in a really um you

know powerful way. And just to chime in too, I mean when we’re having all of

those thoughts, we’re evaluating marketing resources. And I think what drew us to Kristen, I think we talked to

six or seven firms at the time. I mean, this was a pretty wide search for us from a marketing funnel. And

Kristen, what appealed to us is you are a small business owner as well too and

former advisor. And those are things that that made us stop and say, “Hey, I

think this is the right person to help us partner to not only launch this new firm, but launch kind of within the

business owner niche as well, too.” Oh, interesting. That’s an extra layer. I’ll say that being having um run an RA

has definitely helped me in the way that you see when you’re having conversations just because you have been in the in the

shoes of the the people you’re working with which I think you know it doesn’t always have to be the niche you pursue

you know people always you know look and go well do I have to pursue people like me you don’t have to but when you when

you can or do or feel excitement around that It certainly um you know helps

bring those relationships to fruition faster. I think gives you the natural connection. And I’ll say all the work

when I was working with you and with other firms like when you’re you’re learning from other businesses what

their mistakes are. I’m seeing what your mistakes are. You’ll probably see what my mistakes are. It’s fun to learn and

see and be in that creative energetic culture of entrepreneurship, right? no matter where you are on the stage, you

know, we all want to grow. We’re all facing those issues. You’re at different levels of um progression and it’s it’s

um it’s certainly an exciting niche and one that just seemed to be one that drew

energy from you. I know um John Schwab when when you’d come um on a call and

talk about how you’re helping a client or how you’re addressing a need it just flows naturally right it’s just like let

me because you genuinely believe in entrepreneurship and I see

that come through and so the the messaging you know really making that

choice of hey we are going to commit to this particular target audience. That’s

where I saw it, you know, change for you where we weren’t, hey, let’s try to make sure we fold in everyone so that we can

do that or we don’t want to alienate our our high netw worth individuals that we

work with. It’s not about that. You service them and service them well. It’s about where are we investing our

marketing resources to attract and grow. So, what direction are we taking the firm? And that’s something I know John

Hunger and you kept bringing it back of like are we going in the direction we want to go and we kept you know working

together in that coaching being like are we staying on that track? Yes, let’s keep it there. So I saw a shift in you

even just making that decision that yes we are all in on this audience

and it’s got to feel good. I mean, [laughter] I know it informed it informs um so much

of like knowing where, you know, how to set those quarterly rocks and where you want to go next, right? I mean, I I saw

that as a through line. I you know, I saw about eight quarters of rocks and it’s like we could see the through line

and the pacing, right, of how are we going to now where are we focusing? Is it website? Is it content? Is it

outreach in the community? Is it advertising dollars? What is it? So, um,

go ahead, John. Oh, no. No. I mean, yeah, it certainly seems obvious in retrospect, you know, and very for us to go down that niche,

but I don’t want to pretend like I mean, it was a lot of hard conversations internally, hard conversations with you.

And I think everything we’ve talked about is kind of tied together. We had to be on the right platform, you know, which was a fully

independent RAA. We had to be partnered with the right marketing consultant, which was you, to help us jumpstart kind

of within. And we had to be working with the right type of clients. So we had to have everything kind of lined up.

Yeah. Yeah. And I think that and the hard piece at upon making the decision

to folks on this audience is trying to bring that messaging alive. I know we we

invested a lot of time and energy into getting that messaging down and bringing it trying to bring it forth to the

website to the collateral that you have to the talking points on podcasts and

and on videos and things that you’re doing. So I think um that is one area

that um I’d be curious to hear like are you feeling confident and comfortable

now in that space around the messaging?

Yeah, I think the messaging is is is really strong. I think we know, you

know, who we are and we’re doing a better job, I think, of relaying that in

in the marketplace so that not only, you know, do our clients recognize that, but

people around us, you know, especially, I’d say, like our centers of influence, it’s it’s hard to differentiate

sometimes in the wealth management space. And oh yeah, we’re not going to be the best fit, you

know, for every, you know, potential client or or people that get referred to

us. But I feel like, you know, having made this commitment and having gone out

and and talked to people about it, people know who we are and who are best suited to work with. And

that’s been I think that’s been a really, you know, great thing for the firm. And quite frankly, it’s really

good for the people we get introduced to because we’re probably going to be a pretty good fit for them versus, you

know, someone that gets introduced and maybe maybe isn’t quite the right fit. Um, and they could be better served

somewhere else. Right. Right. It’d be I think it would be valuable for people listening in just

to hear a little bit about how you’ve approached where you’re directing your

marketing um early on. I know we started with con you know baseline content on

the website like how are we developing um you know your your story arc of like

hey these are the areas of expertise we have and we broke down doing some you know very detailed long form blog post

to really get that like understanding that we do more than just investment

management. we serve business owners in this way and these are all of the problems that could come up and these

are the things that are worrying you and here’s how we help you. So we we had a content arc on that. We got messaging on

the website around um business owners. You have a lead magnet, right? A free a

free uh free information in exchange for a name and email address. I definitely

want you to talk about that. But how else has it informed where you direct

your time, money, and energy both on the staffing side and the internal side and externally?

Yeah, Kristen, this is probably a good story for [sighs] the listeners or

viewers. I remember the first thing you had us do, you called it or maybe we called it a manifesto.

Yes, I know you called it that. I was like, do we want to call it that? But okay, you did. which was a very

intimidating I think document for us to approach because I don’t remember what the length was as far as word

I remember thinking to myself like oh my god how are we going to do you know 3 to 5,000 words on how we serve business

owners and right right John and I sat down to write it I realized it was coming much easier than

I thought it would just because it was the niche that we probably should be orienting towards because it’s kind of

where we have the passion and I think it took us all of like three or four days to put together kind of the base kind of

rough draft and I think that was a very good exercise for us because it informed us hey we’re going the right direction

but it also informed a lot of the marketing that we’ve done from that point too which is like hey let’s take this manifesto so to speak and how do we

break it into more tangible pieces for the audience that we’re trying to serve. So, right. And that piece is evergreen and

things that you can come back to and and I do think because it really if if there was one thing that kind of crystallized

the foundation of messaging. I do think that going through that exercise together because I remember it you you

were like, “Oh my goodness, you want us to do what?” [laughter]

And you know, and it’s something and it I’ll I’ll say ear it wasn’t like you could AI was around but early and you

were doing it like yeah it wasn’t like today where you’re like yes give me a 5,000word post and you’re like oh we

have to do this ourselves we have to write it and it was good like just

seeing the categories and things it even kind of influenced how you position conversations with centers of influence

right and looking at different um people who you have on your team who can help

solve estate planning issues, right? Or looking at for tax partners, etc. Like

you’re looking for the all of those elements that shape the team and the service offering. And it comes from

well, let’s get really clear by answering some fundamental questions in a single blog post. And so I think that

that’s helpful from that point. And then as you look to get out in the community, how are you making those choices?

because I know you’ve made some investments in that way as well. Yeah. And I’ll just say just just with

the team knowing the direction that we’re going and even the you know certainly the partners, it’s important

like what credentials are we going to get, what are we going to try and get better, right? So I’m a certified exit

planning advisor or or a SEIPA, right, as we call it in our industry. We’ve had, you know, two of our other

adviserss, including Trevor, my business partner, Kyle, um, who’s another great

CFP at our firm, both become seas. I mean, now we’re not only financial planners, but we’re helping people

specifically with business exit planning. So, that’s helped, right? The conferences that we go to, right?

And then, as you mentioned, what events are we sponsoring, right? So there’s another podcast, you know, that

we sponsor called poise for exit. I mean, it’s right in our niche market, right? Yeah. Right on target, right? Yeah.

It’s right on target. And so it does help as you, you know, get into where

are you going to spend your time and your money and are they in the right

rooms with the right people? And I think before we were a little more scattered and just sort of stuff would come up and

it’s like, oh, that kind of sounds good. Maybe we’ll try this, maybe we’ll try that. Yeah, it’s not like that anymore. I think we

have a pretty clear, you know, focus on where we’re going and why, and that helps inform the rest of

these decisions. Yeah, I think that’s one of the most valuable things that

can happen for leadership in a firm is to be able to have a sort of a a marker

against which to measure these decisions so that you can say, is this taking us in the direction we want to go? Yes or

no? Is this building on the last thing we did? Yes or no? versush we’ll try

throw this here put that there post that there maybe we’ll do this you know when I see this come to fruition it really

makes makes a big difference and and I’ve heard I’ve tuned into your podcast where you’ve been interviewed John

Schrobe on the poise for exit and I mean and just hearing the messaging it’s very

comfortable it’s natural you’re reinforcing the value to the target audience it’s really um like it it’s

just flowing in that way and are how are you seeing it? Um, you know, you have I

know we have the business we did you created this business owner assessment

as a tool for people to take a look at. I mean, that’s something that’s very tangible that if you know a business

owner is listening and they and they uh or they’re coming to your site and they see it and they can fill that out and

engage with it and you’re looking at potentially ways to evolve or change that. But um how are you finding

that kind of tool to help you with the marketing as well? Because that is something I always bring up and and it

is it is something that uh I’d love to hear you speak to. Well, it’s it’s nice for people to be

able to come to our site and have something short, five minutes long that they can

that they can take at their own pace and just, you know, hopefully get some value from it. It’ll ask them this assessment

we have is just 20 questions and but they’re 20 really important questions about

how, you know, business owners should kind of look at financial planning and some of the key things that they need to

start thinking about. And it’s and it’s all selfcored. It’s not real complicated.

But when we look at that for the first time with the business owner, it really helps us go to the things that

are most top of mind because this can be pretty intimidating, especially for, you know, somebody

that’s got a million things that they’re doing running their business. Then they got to think about this financial

planning thing. And it’s like maybe there’s just a couple of things that we can start a conversation with and start

building some trust because this doesn’t have to start out as some massive

project or some huge plan, right? We can start just a conversation. What

do you what’s working? What are you struggling with? Where can we help you? And again build that relationship over

time. Yeah. And what I think is really interesting around that and kind of what

what doing again putting that lead magnet that survey together as well as

the um the manifesto if you will. It it also informed kind of another piece, the

service offering that you’re developing and you deliver, right? Because originally it was kind of like, okay,

yeah, here’s our big thing that you can buy, right? Here’s team up with us and here we go. And I

know uh you were working and perhaps are still working internally on structuring

knowing that there are different entry points that a business owner can come in through and that you do want to help

them tackle their biggest problem, their their hurdles that they’re really weighing them down now and it may not be

the same for each person. How are you thinking about that? And how has zooming in on this niche helped you think

internally too in terms of structure and pro and process and product offering service offering? Yeah, I think that’s

the that’s the fun part for us and the things that we like to do together and

we enjoy collaborating Kristen with you as well too on kind of building those tools and that is the part of the

freedom I think we enjoy about you know being on the fully independent side is yeah John and I can put together a

questionnaire you know we can run it past our compliance consultant get their input

but we don’t have to go through five or six different levels of say you know corporate RAA approvals to get something

like that done. We’ve developed our own freedom financial app to help in the client experience as well too that folds

a lot of our business owner content into a coherent package and allows these business owners that are running 10,000

miles a minute to kind of have one portal that they’re looking at to help drill down on some of those. So yeah,

that that’s an example of some of the tools and the business owner product for us has been kind of a work in progress

over the last couple years as we kind of hone in and we only put tools in front of them that we think that they’re going

to get a lot of value from. Right. Right. And just understanding too, just to play

on that, that a lot of business owners don’t don’t come in sometimes they they they have a lot of, you know, assets

outside the business, but that’s not always the case, right? Often a lot of business owners have a lot of their

net worth tied up in their businesses or maybe their retirement plans in the business. And so having fee structures

and things that allow people to work with you and to charge, you know,

planning fees, I think, is really important in in the business owner market because it really meets the

business owner where they’re at, quite frankly, how they’re used to paying for a lot of other services. And

Right. Right. you know, you work into that relationship over time and we do manage a lot of assets, but it may be

something that we do, you know, further down the line and we just start um with

one part of the planning process that they need help with knowing that again we’re going to continue to build on that

over time, right? And I think the flexibility that you have, I would imagine being

independent to be able to create the process that you want to create the product that you want and to be able to

say, “Hey, we’re going to start this conversation talking about your estate planning

because that’s what’s you’re worried about versus being like, now let’s start go in on the investments and set up your

portfolio.” And just that freedom to be able to uh engage with people that you

do want to form long-term relationships with I imagine is quite a huge

difference from the BD world. And then um I’m not sure how is that different in terms of even your mindset or approach.

I’m not sure what you would have been able to do through a corporate RA if you would have still been able to do that. But more so about your how you feel

about being able to do that. We looked at [sighs and gasps] John, you can correct me if I’m wrong. I think we’ve

looked at every business owner tool known to man [laughter] within the industry that’s an

offtheshelf type version. And there were parts to all of them that we liked in

some part, but we never felt like there was one that kind of captured everything that we were were going for. And

that’s why we enjoy that the the freedom and flexibility to create our own questionnaires, to create our own apps.

Like John gets to walk into a meeting with a business owner using an app that he created with a questionnaire that he

created and have the conversation that he wants to create. And I think that’s the part of our careers that we’re at. We’ve been doing this for a while.

We like what we like each other. We trust ourselves to create a better business owner product than say a

corporate RAA would. Yeah. No, I think it’s super. John, were you gonna add on that?

I think John summarized that very very well. Yeah.

And I think it’s fun because when when you came to me, you were like, “Okay, you know, I you had responded to my

version 2.0 messaging.” Like you’re create crafting your version 2.0. What does it look like? It almost feels like

you’re, you know, you’re really getting to a point of fruition on that now a

couple years later where you’ve made it’s two years later, you’re in year three now and you’re like, “Hey, we have

flexibility. We know our market. We are comfortable getting out with our messaging.

uh you know we’re we’re finding the the people in the community we want to reach. We have tools. We’re developing

apps. We’re we’re highly focused on serving this one, you know, audience

fully and um I I just think that’s really exciting and it’s fun to see

see you having fun with it, frankly. [laughter] No. And that’s what we appreciated kind of partnering with you

as well too is you understood the vision of what we were going for and this wasn’t going to be a cookie cutter

business. It wasn’t like we’re you didn’t come in and tell us hey you’re going to do these four things in

order. You said you know where are we at as a business too and helped us adapt as we started to build out some of this

stuff too. And yeah that’s who we want to partner with longer term as a business like ours are people that think

you know in the ways that we do too. So, it’s been a fun journey. Yeah. I mean, it’s certainly what makes

the work I do far more fun and interesting. And now I get to watch and

and I get so excited when I see something on LinkedIn and I see, ah, that’s right on target. Look at them.

They’re doing that thing. Oh, they had wanted to do that, now they’re doing it, which is really fun because we got you

to a spot where you’re so clear and so ready and that you can just get out and get, you know, attractive and do the

work you want to do. This is the year a lot of that is kind of culminating to where we’re in the right rooms. We’re

using John in the correct ways to help market the business. You know, John’s

all over the place. He’s on TVs, on podcast, [laughter] I know. I love it.

I love it. I know. And for all of you out there who go, “Yeah.” [laughter] Yeah.

Yes. And John is very uh he’s very modest, but he’s excellent at that. at

that uh work. So, if you can get a chance, tune in. Um, is there anything you wish you knew before you got into

all of this that you were like, “Ah, if only I knew that, we would do it this way.”

I I think when you look back on a lot of your career, you’re kind of always like, “Boy, I wish I would have done more of

this sooner, you know, finding our niche sooner, going fully independent sooner.” I mean,

they’re easy things to say, but at the end of the day, sometimes it’s just the

right time in the life cycle of your business where you do have not just not just the economics work, but I think

your experience has kind of culminated to a point where you just feel like, yeah, this is who we are best. It’s just

our most authentic self. You know, we’re we’re going to serve this type of client

best. And that doesn’t happen overnight. It sometimes just takes time and experience. So, well, I always look back

and say, “Yeah, I wish we would have done X, Y, and Z sooner. We’re [clears throat] where we’re at today and we feel very blessed, you

know, throughout this journey and we’re just very excited, I think, for, you know, what the foreseeable future holds,

you know, for our firm and where we take it.” Uh, yes. Well said. Well said. John,

anything to add on that? No, I mean, I think everything kind of happened in the order. I mean, we we’ve

talked about a lot of our big kind of inflection points and what led us to where we are today. And it all kind of

tied together, which was, you know, I started a little over five years ago. And then shortly after that, we went on

to EOS and we had to make sure that we had the right right people on the bus before we made a big, you know, huge

business transition. And then we had to make sure we’re talking to the right people and we’re talking to them in the

right ways. And Kristen, you’ve certainly been very helpful in the latter part of that.

journey. But yeah, it all ties together and I agree with John. I mean, it’s easy to say, “Oh, we I wish we would have

done that 10 years earlier.” But I think we’re in the in the spot we should be in and we’re excited about what’s ahead of

us as a business. Yeah, that’s exciting. And that’s what makes my work so fulfilling, too. Um, is

because I do always believe that people, no matter where they are and what they stand on, you know, we all are the sum

of our experience. And and I think that can give a lot of comfort because

all of the decisions we’ve made to date inform who you are now. And and that’s

should give you just like, hey, if you if it was you knew everything perfectly, we would have been surprised by

something else. So it’s fun to kind of live in that. I I find it very inspiring and it’s one reason I do love to serve

helping people create that next version of themselves and their business because you know it gives people the courage to

make a change, figure out what really matters to them and build something that’s truly fit for you. So I’m very

pleased to have been part of your journey. I love now being uh an observer to see where things are going and I

really appreciate you joining me and sharing your story. It it means a lot to me and um if I could just duplicate you

guys over and over again, I would be living my best life. So, well, that’s my goal.

We could we could duplicate you, we’d have a lot of marketing consultants to work with. So, [laughter]

there you go. as well. Just along our journey and

pointing us in in the right direction and I think giving us, you know, the confidence to really,

you know, go after, you know, that part of the market that was most really most authentic to us and just

yeah, feel, you know, very confident about our future and certainly have a lot more

clarity after working with you on on uh on all these

things that we’ve that we’ve done over the last couple of years. Yeah. Well, thank you very much. And I

am uh again, please I’m looking forward. I’ll be out at the Ascent Conference in Minneapolis in the fall. So, um that

will be fun. I’ll be able to stop by the Freedom Financial Partners office. So,

that will be a treat for me. Um and for everyone listening, um if this is

something when you’re when you’re listening and thinking, hm, we we have a vision for our 2.0 you know, or we want

to get clear on that or I want to know more about this. Feel free visit me at fulladvisorcoaching.com.

Click that button in the upper right hand corner that says request a call and we’ll have a conversation and who knows

where it will go and where it will take you. And uh thank you to everyone for

listening in today. I appreciate you being here and I encourage you to go out and make it a great day.

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