Don’t Do That: Don’t Stop Listening to Your Clients with Matt Schulte, eMoney Advisor

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If you engage an architect to help you design your dream home well, you might have a conversation where you're like, what if I move this room to the other side of the house?
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Or what if I knock down that wall?
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You do that in financial planning.
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You get them to engage in it.
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You get them to ponder and see the incremental impact each and every strategy or decision has on their plan.
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It's a completely different level of engagement.
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It's a different level of then commitment, I think, because the client will buy into something a whole lot easier if they're a part of it as opposed to being told what to do.
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Welcome to the Don't Do That podcast. I'm Kelly Waltrich, CEO and Co-founder of Intention.ly and like me, this show is no fluff and no bs, just smart advice to help you learn from the best and level up faster.
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So what are we not doing today? Let's find out.
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Hi everyone and welcome to the Don't Do That podcast. I'm your host, Kelly Waltrich, and today I have with me the one and only Matt Schulte. Hi Matt.
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Good afternoon, Kelly. How you doing?
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I am so excited for this. Guys.
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We work in industries completely centered around financial planning and there are some people in the background of financial planning that you don't hear about enough, and Matt is one of those people.
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If you think about the technologies that are so core to the last few decades of financial planning in our space, eMoney is at the top of that list.
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I may be a little biased because I spent some time there, but it is truly foundational to the way advisors go about financial planning today, and Matt is the mind behind how that system was built and brought to life, and he's so humble.
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So I'm sure the first thing he's going to say is try to not take credit for that, but is the absolute truth.
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So we're going to have an awesome time today talking about his time at eMoney as he just retired and all of the fun along the way.
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How's that sound, Matt?
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That sounds great, Kelly.
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It's wonderful to see you and to see that smiling face.
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That's one thing I've definitely missed over the last few years since you left.
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That smile is contagious.
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Oh, I missed you too guys. So my background, I spent some time at eMoney Advisor and it was a joy.
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It was like I look back on that time, it was wild, Matt, and how you weathered all the changes throughout the years.
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You are an amazing human, but I look back on that and you think what are the moments of your career that are a foundation for everything else you end up doing?
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And eMoney is certainly mine.
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Well, and it certainly is for me.
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Me, I mean I was there for 25 years, 25 years.
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So I was very Midwestern naive when I moved out to Philadelphia when the company started and those early days, you do a little bit of everything, you have to, it's just how those kinds of startups operate.
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And I was fortunate enough to be in the right spot with an old employer where I happened upon Edmund Walters who founded eMoney. We had a working relationship for a few years and when he was noodling on this, when he was saying, you know what, and remember the time, right? This was late nineties.com craze, everybody and their brother had ideas.
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He had an idea for a better way to engage clients in the advisory process.
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He raised money actually from his business owner clients.
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So he was an advisor, he had his own clients and raised money to start our initial few days.
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I think we've talked about this.
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I lived in his daughter's pink bedroom for the first six months of the company before I brought my family out from Minnesota.
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That's where I'm a native. There was eight of us day one and it was crazy time. And to your point, over the 25 years, a lot of ebbs and flows, A lot of peaks. I'm not going to say valleys, but there's certainly ebbs and flows to a history that long, but it's a little cliche, but I don't know that I'd change too much of it because it's those dips sometimes those failures that you learn from.
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That's in part what the podcast is about, right?
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There's so much to learn when you start something up.
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So for those of you listening and who don't know Matt, he just retired like he said, after 25 years at eMoney.
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So congratulations, Matt.
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That's an awesome, thank you.
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Thank you.
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That's an awesome, and I'm dying to know, as I'm sure everyone is where you're going to put your time and energy next, but we won't press you on that. You get a little bit of a break after 25 years.
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Just need to live it a little bit and that I'll be a position to be more definitive.
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Okay, so first I want to say hi to the OG Edmund Walters and I want to know from you, what is it that makes you uproot your family for something like Emani? Now I know how good a storyteller Edmond was and I know how persuasive he was firsthand, but I want to know what was the gravitational pull?
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That's a big move and a big bet to make.
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Sure, I mean, part of it was timing.
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It was a time when there was just so much of it.
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It was so in the news starting up these internet based companies and taking legacy kinds of businesses and transferring them onto the web. And so there was just pure excitement about it.
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There was timing, right?
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Timing from my kids were one was nine months old, the other was three.
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I was in my early thirties if I was ever going to do something like that, that was really the time to do it, honestly.
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I told my wife, you know what? These things, they fail or succeed and we'll be back in a couple of years.
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Don't worry about it, honey. We'll be back in a couple of years.
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Little did I know we would still be out in Pennsylvania, Philadelphia area 25 years later. But yeah, I mean the timing was right. The opportunity was there. And you know what?
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I didn't look at it as a huge risk because what was the worst case scenario? I'd be back in Minnesota.
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I could probably get my old job back and I would have a tremendous experience and learnings that I could then apply to something else.
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So yes, there was an aspect of risk, I guess, especially moving across the country. But again, because of the timing and where I was at, where my family was at, and maybe it was also naive to think that there wasn't a whole lot of risks.
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So that was maybe part of it, but it worked out.
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I couldn't be happier with how the whole thing kind of played out over 25 years. But to your point, certainly those early years are just different because as I mentioned, you're doing a little bit of everything.
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Edmund was so passionate about trying to do something different in that space Again, he was living in that space, so.
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He.
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Had the instincts and he understood what advisors wanted, what they needed, and it was cool. Again, especially I was living there at his house.
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I mean, I'd get a knock on the door of the pink bedroom at 5:00 AM because he wanted to beat everybody into the office. I mean, that's just how he was. And we'd come home, we'd have dinner, and then we'd sit on the couch with big white pads and we would kind of think about what we might want to build and what would be critical and what would be important.
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It was like little whiteboards in these big pads and we would just write it all out.
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It's amazing.
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I feel like you were a beautiful balance to Edmond.
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I feel like every founder that has big ideas and as much passion as he has we'll say, needs somebody who is going to be the steady constant. And you were not just that for him.
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I feel like you've been that free money for as long as I've known you.
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Well, thank you. That certainly fits. I think my personality, my operating style.
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I was never going to be like him and start something like yourself and start something up like that.
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I wanted to be one of those trusted people that help execute on some of the ideas and plans.
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I had my own ideas and I threw them in and it, it's a wonderful thing to be able to look back, especially in the technology business because you're in a position to see your fingerprints on stuff. As we evolve, as we modernize, some of those fingerprints go away, but the heart of it is there. And so yeah, that balance was good.
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I listened to an earlier conversation you had on this podcast, and I think you brought up an anecdote from your time at Orion and kind of being on the stage and hearing for maybe the first time or barely before this idea.
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And Edmund was certainly that way.
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He would bring things up that we hadn't started yet. We hadn't built yet, but I think it was market testing. It was trying, especially building technology for advisors. Well, how are the advisors going to react?
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How are they going to shape it and tweak what maybe was his initial thought to get to something else? So again, I think those can be kind of formative.
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It can create a little bit of tumult back in the office when you have to go back and execute on it.
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And I know you said you have found yourself doing that to your team even now.
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So yeah, it's just, again, you sign up for an experience like that and that's part of it, and you got to figure out a way to react and try to make it work.
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I look back and eMoney was one of the more wild times of my life.
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I feel like there was a group that was very young and somewhat inexperienced, but willing to run through walls is what I felt like because the passion that you guys as the founding group really brought forth, we all brought into, we were all very much brought in and I think I have carried that with me as how you have to get people bought into the things that you're doing because if they're not passionate about it, then they're not going to run hard in the direction you're going.
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The persuasiveness is so important.
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The ability I think, to articulate back to the team, the problems and the struggles and why what you're doing, connecting those dots of saying, and here's how you can make this easier.
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This is how that end client is going to receive it differently and in a better way. So yeah, I mean that's definitely important. Being able to, again, not just persuasive on the stage to the audience you're going for, but internally persuasive, getting people to buy into the mission and the vision, even though the mission and the vision can swerve around and can take you to some interesting spots.
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And it's not a place for people who want complete structure and I want to know exactly what I'm doing today, tomorrow, and next week, and it can change.
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And you have have to be willing to sign up for that if you're going to join something. Again, you get to a point maturation wise where that becomes less and less. But honestly, I think that there's something to be learned from that for more mature companies. How can we bring a little bit of that back? I mean.
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Oh my gosh, I totally agree. I totally agree.
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Just so much fun. I think about it.
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We just had so much fun. Okay, Matt, so more about you. So tell us, you have to have a few moments over the course of the last 25 years that stand out to you or things that you're most proud of.
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What are you most proud of?
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I think one of the things that we tried to do from the very earliest iterations of eMoney was change the way an advisor client meeting happens.
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The old world was very much, okay, Mr. And Mrs. Client, let's please refer to the bottom of page six in your plan where you'll see this chart.
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And I think Edmond instinctively knew that there was opportunities there to improve on that.
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And so from the earliest iterations we were looking to create engagement, we were looking to create an interactive planning experience to bring clients into the conversation to get them to not just be the recipient of a plan, but to be a participant in the plan.
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So that was really important in some of our early designs of creating this environment where you can bring the client in and whether it's putting it up on the wall or whatever, you can actually, well, what if we did this?
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What if we did that?
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The analogy I always like to use, I've been using it for 20 years, is if you engage an architect to help you design your dream home, well, you might have a conversation where you're like, what if I move this room to the other side of the house?
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Or what if I knock down that wall?
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You do that in financial planning, you get them to engage in it, you get them to ponder and see the incremental impact each and every strategy or decision has on their plan.
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It's a completely different level of engagement.
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It's a different level of then commitment, I think, because the client will buy into something a whole lot easier if they're a part of it as opposed to being told what to do.
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And so that ability to create that environment and kind of pioneering the idea of an interactive planning meeting with your clients, I think is certainly one of the things I most proud of because it, it's been central to eMoney for a long time.
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Central to eMoney and the whole industry, honestly, I dunno if you saw, I had Patty Brennan on for our listeners, we had an advisory board and the advisory board at eMoney.
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I don't know how it played out in the years after my departure, but while I was there, I thought it was the absolute best thing ever.
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We got this group of very passionate advisors, and like Matt said, Edmond was an advisor, and so we had advisors that invested in the platform.
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We had advisor friends, but we just had this core group of passionate advisors who I think ran alongside the business as brand ambassadors. Still to this day, most of them.
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Loyal.
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And still carrying the story forward.
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And I talked to Patty Brennan in a prior episode. You guys may have listened, and she's still talking about the way that she delivers her client meetings based on exactly what Matt just described.
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So it's really cool to see that all these years later.
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Those advisory boards, advisory board meetings that we had, you were certainly a part of some of them, but we had them from the very beginning. I mean, there were early ones where we would have our meeting usually in a nice location where you could participate in some fun as well, but sometimes we just, that went to the wayside and at the end of the agenda for the meeting, instead of going off and getting your massage or playing golf or doing whatever, advisors would come up to our rooms and we're projecting the platform on the wall and we're walking through different things.
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There was a kind of desire for them to make their fingerprints in there as well. I mean, understandably so. I mean, they were giving us unbelievable advice, shaping dramatically what we did, but maybe more importantly how we prioritize things ever ending list of ideas and suggestions.
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But they were particularly good at helping us prioritize and determine what we should be adding and when.
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So as you say those things, two things come to mind. Listeners, you should know that eMoney prioritized, at least when I was there, and probably I imagine the whole time prioritized fun as part of the experience.
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And I think that's where the deep passion from everybody came from because it was a lot of work. But we had fun.
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I remember an advisory board, Matt, oh my God, I'm going to break out in hives just thinking about it, where Edmund had meated a ocean kayaking experience.
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Where I ended up under water in the waves, trying, fighting for my life, trying to get back to shore. I still have nightmares.
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About this, but we just had so much fun and I think that that's like, people may not see that on the outside, but the journey for Emani was one of intense passion and just a lot of fun.
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Yeah, no, the fun was definitely part of it. Work hard, play hard was definitely part of the mantra.
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Developers had standup arcade games in their offices.
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We had segues that people bopped around the office on.
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Remember, we had a dog for a while, we had an office dog.
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That.
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Was a idea.
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But to the earlier points, I think it certainly helps.
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It certainly helps to get the buy-in and to get the commitment to the long hours and the surprise projects and all of that stuff that comes, it's easier.
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And also all one specific anecdote was generous. Oh my.
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Gosh, yes.
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So there was one year where we were looking at the calendar of conferences and events and deciding, okay, which ones are we going to go to and everything else.
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And I look and there's this conference in Hawaii Mai over the exact date of my 10 year anniversary, and I honeymooned in Maui and it was on Maui. And so I'm like, well, that's got my name written all over it.
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So I raised my hand very quickly for that one, and I was able to go and I turned it into a thing.
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I brought my wife and my kids ended up, my in-laws came as well to help babysit, and Edmond was like, yeah, why don't you stay an extra five days and we will pick up the hotel.
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It was just those kinds of things that again, it's never one thing or another, it's the collective, all of those types of things.
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It created an environment where to your point of running through walls, you were willing to do it.
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And it was something that I now have umpteen memories about my daughters diving into the ocean for the first time and going snorkeling and all that stuff, and I associated with you money. I can't help, but.
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Matt, did you cry on your last day?
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I did. Plenty of tearing up.
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Let's just say that.
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Especially with my team, it's really hard to articulate how you feel about them.
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I will tell you one thing, we had a town hall meeting, our fourth quarter town hall meeting, and it was after my announcement, and Susan, the CEO at eMoney was gracious enough to give my team a few minutes in that town hall, and I had a very difficult time trying to sum up after what they said. It's one of those things where, and I've said this to others, you go through a career however long and you hope that you're doing things the right way.
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You think you're doing things the right way from a leadership standpoint, from a manager standpoint, from a human standpoint.
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And I was definitely able afterwards to be like, okay, I think some of it I did right?
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Oh my gosh.
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Because they said such beautiful things about me. It was, I get chills thinking about it even now.
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I mean, Matt, you have to be the most beloved eMoney employee ever to have lived.
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Well, there's been a lot of eMoney employees.
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I's very clear too. What's interesting too that you say, I feel like you've obviously seen people move on from eMoney.
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You were there for a long time, people you loved and cared about, and were excited to see their next steps. As I look across eMoney alumni, hi guys, I know you're listening to this, I.
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Fire and Ice.
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I feel like I watched a lot of the people that and love and I know and love try to find their next eMoney.
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I feel like I watched a generation of eMoney employees go out and try to find that again, and it's not something to be replicated. It's just not.
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It's definitely hard.
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Definitely the grass is always greener kind of thing when you have a real good experience.
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I think there's a reason why you should underline when you do find a place like that, it's important to recognize it and say it to the people you're with.
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At the same time, it can't be an end all be all for everybody.
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For everyone.
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People have to move on and do the next great thing and the next big thing.
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It's actually one regret I had this past year was our 25th anniversary at Ani, so we did a series of things throughout the year, kind of recognizing 25 years.
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One thing I wish we would have done was to kind of do what you're talking about, and that is to acknowledge and recognize not just the people there today, but all that have come in our populated across this industry, starting companies, working with our clients, doing really great things in so many different ways.
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It's great to see as somebody who's been there that long, seeing all those points of connection.
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It does remind you though that people do have to fly on their own and they do have to find their next thing, and that's okay. That's okay.
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As much as you might want certain people to stay, I mean, I'm going to use you. I mean, you were with us for a few years.
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It was clear to me that you were going to do your own thing.
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You were going to start your own thing and you were cultivating the experiences you needed to be in a position to do that.
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You weren't going to do it too early.
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You needed to have certain things, or at least that's how I felt from my end.
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Yeah, no, I mean, you're spot on.
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I almost launched it after I left and I said to myself, I need to do this again. I need to make sure I do know what I'm doing.
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And it wasn't a fluke and it wasn't like right place, right time because there was so much going right at eMoney.
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The product was so good.
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The people were so good, the culture was so good that you ask yourself, I think this is coming together. I think the right things are happening.
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I think as a leader in the marketing area, this is good. We're cooking, but then I was like, you know what?
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I need to battle test this. I need to make sure I can do this again under different circumstances. And I got very lucky. Obviously, I said that that culture and that situation is hard to replicate.
00:25:08.990 --> 00:25:11.079
I got very close to it with Orion at that time period.
00:25:11.150 --> 00:25:15.880
They were a phenomenal situation as well. But yeah, that was my mindset.
00:25:16.039 --> 00:25:33.920
I was like, I need to make sure this isn't right place, right time and that I can actually do this stuff. But yeah, I mean, I'm sure you know this, but every time eMoney alumni are out in the wild. We track each other down. We make a hoopla. We all try to get together.
00:25:34.059 --> 00:25:38.839
We make sure that everyone around us knows it's the eMoney alumni crew.
00:25:39.339 --> 00:25:47.559
Yes. Yes. Well, I was fortunate that just last month, less than a month ago, there was a happy hour. I think you were.
00:25:48.200 --> 00:25:48.680
I was supposed.
00:25:48.680 --> 00:26:22.230
To talk in Orlando, maybe at Disney, but I was able to see Lisa, but you get this cross section of folks from 20 years ago, 15 years ago, 10 years ago, and everybody finds a way to tie their stories back across the other stories. It was really nice. And actually, let me see if I have one here, because they created these little things here for everybody in the bar was holding them up when I walked in the room, so it was very nice.
00:26:23.140 --> 00:26:23.972
Oh my gosh.
00:26:33.960 --> 00:26:45.210
Okay. So I feel like for those of you listening, I'm sure you can feel the impact of 25 years leading financial planning at eMoney, but I don't know. I don't have the words, Matt.
00:26:45.289 --> 00:26:49.930
I feel like I don't have the right words because your impact was like, it's hard to describe.
00:26:50.849 --> 00:27:09.450
I feel like everything from building a team of people who would stand on a railroad for you to pioneering a program that brought the educational system into the financial planning world, I feel like we should talk about that for a minute. Sure.
00:27:09.509 --> 00:27:09.730
And.
00:27:09.730 --> 00:27:10.563
Everything in between.
00:27:10.769 --> 00:27:16.563
I feel like it's so hard to express the impact that what are we going to do without you?
00:27:17.930 --> 00:27:22.299
Well, I'm still available to have conversations and.
00:27:22.680 --> 00:27:23.450
Oh my gosh.
00:27:23.450 --> 00:27:28.900
Help people with whatever. No, I mean, I appreciate you bringing it up about the educational stuff.
00:27:29.279 --> 00:27:48.579
The university program was something that we built at eMoney, and it came from this idea that A, there's just a kind of bad rap and rep for advisors and brokers, and it was so different from my experience.
00:27:48.680 --> 00:27:53.059
My experience is this is one of the most noble professions there is.
00:27:53.279 --> 00:28:11.980
You've got folks who are impacting lives in dramatic ways, and what can we do to help bolster those financial planning programs that were starting to pop up at universities all over the place. So we built a program.
00:28:07.220 --> 00:28:11.980
There was also some selfishness there.
00:28:12.160 --> 00:28:16.619
We wanted people to get familiar with eMoney while they were still in school.
00:28:16.990 --> 00:28:21.940
We wanted folks to be able to kind of say, Hey, I'm fluent in eMoney.
00:28:21.940 --> 00:28:35.099
We actually created a certification program so those same students could become certified in eMoney, and I should put that on their resume.
00:28:30.279 --> 00:28:45.900
So it was something I certainly wish I had available to me when I was going to college, a program like that, and just a program in planning in general, because you kind of have to find that through other means.
00:28:46.319 --> 00:28:52.500
And now compared to when I was doing it, it was largely a production based business.
00:28:52.759 --> 00:29:08.859
And now with the collaborative practice approach that you see in so many firms now where depending on what your pension is, you could be an asset gatherer, you could you can play a part on that team.
00:29:09.480 --> 00:29:12.660
And so I think it's got a broader appeal.
00:29:13.859 --> 00:29:26.759
I use the term helping profession because it's always associated with healthcare related professions like nursing or physical therapy, which are all wonderful and applied to it.
00:29:28.230 --> 00:29:31.759
I've got one daughter who's a speech therapist down in dc.
00:29:31.910 --> 00:29:52.569
I've got another one who's going back to grad school to be an occupational therapist. So I get it and agree with all that. I just think a financial advisor and in particular one with a financial planning foundation to their practice, I think is the ultimate definition of a helping profession.
00:29:52.630 --> 00:30:06.589
So from my standpoint, anything we could do at eMoney to try to foster that and encourage that was something we were going to try to do. Again, you have to temper it a little bit because there is no immediate ROI.
00:30:06.589 --> 00:30:20.482
And so you've got to be willing to give that grace and say, yeah, we're going to incur this cost, but we also, hey, there are ways to improve brand and everything else with those kinds of endeavors.
00:30:21.200 --> 00:30:34.880
Sure. It's amazing. So Matt, you are ending this stretch of your career in a moment where the world is changing faster than ever before.
00:30:36.140 --> 00:30:45.960
And I think about when you say that you started it at such an exciting time around the.com stuff. We're in another one of those moments.
00:30:46.539 --> 00:30:54.240
So as you are departing, what are you seeing as how is planning going to change?
00:30:54.819 --> 00:31:03.650
How is a need to change? What does that look like? Is there a new way of going about planning? What do you see for the future?
00:31:04.240 --> 00:31:12.250
Well, there's obviously all kinds of headlines and all kinds of headlines that make people question certain things.
00:31:12.809 --> 00:31:24.369
I think you always have to kind of just pause a little bit, pump the brakes and remember that the demise of the advisor has been predicted numbers of times before, right?
00:31:24.470 --> 00:31:25.303
Yes.
00:31:25.950 --> 00:31:44.170
And every time technology evolves and innovates advisors and their firms figure out ways to harness that and leverage it to use to their advantage. So ai, let's say that term specifically, it's going to have a big impact.
00:31:46.049 --> 00:32:00.089
I think everybody needs to be cautious a little bit because I think in a highly regulated industry, I think that the impact at minimum is going to take longer to take hold and may in fact be muted a little bit by that regulation.
00:32:00.690 --> 00:32:13.450
I think that initially where I think eMoney is starting to focus and where I think others are is how can AI help create efficiencies in advice in the financial planning process?
00:32:14.119 --> 00:32:16.650
That could be the data gathering stage of the process.
00:32:16.869 --> 00:32:22.369
It could be in the plan monitoring stage of the process, but what can we do?
00:32:22.829 --> 00:33:00.950
And certainly this is where eMoney has to look. What can we do to help advisors decrease that time to generate a plan, be able to serve a broader market maybe? I mean, to me, that's one of the big things. And beyond eMoney, maybe it can help make certain clients affordable to serve that maybe aren't affordable to serve because you can have that dramatic impact on the time it takes. All of that said, I do have my cautions and my worries about something creeping up that masquerades as advice.
00:33:01.630 --> 00:33:14.579
I just think there's so much nuance in a conversation and meeting with the client that can't just be replicated by large data sets and all this stuff that can be synthesized.
00:33:14.740 --> 00:33:24.380
I think the future, the old paradigm was advisors manipulating technology to get out of it, whatever they're looking to get out of it.
00:33:24.980 --> 00:33:51.259
I think the future is technology where tech is kind of like an intelligent partner to the advisor. Ideas, insights, nudges, more operating like a coach that can operate 24 7, synthesizing data and information to help position them better to help them create those efficiencies. So again, I think it's going to be impactful.
00:33:51.819 --> 00:34:02.740
I think there is a way to think about it as that coach and assistant that I think is where technology companies are going to look to embrace it, who are serving that advisor community.
00:34:04.160 --> 00:34:09.880
My gosh, I think it's going to take every ounce of you not to be thinking about that all the time. How are you.
00:34:09.880 --> 00:34:14.739
To do that? Well, already thinking about it. Yeah.
00:34:15.139 --> 00:34:17.139
I mean, are you going.
00:34:17.139 --> 00:34:19.980
To be Michael Jordan? Are you going to unretire a couple of times here?
00:34:21.630 --> 00:34:26.019
Again, I have no plans for that, but who knows what the future brings?
00:34:26.070 --> 00:34:39.679
And again, to the point from earlier, the right idea has an amazing ability to get you to think differently than before you heard it.
00:34:39.820 --> 00:34:57.840
And when you have some experience there and you're kind of intimate with how quickly things can happen and how long it takes for things to happen at other times, it will make for a lot of interesting reading, certainly if nothing else over the next few years.
00:34:58.800 --> 00:35:05.199
I mean, just sitting here as you're talking, thinking about eMoney and the use cases for AI is almost mind blowing.
00:35:05.199 --> 00:35:12.719
There are just so many things, so many things that, oh my gosh, that team has their work cut out for them for sure.
00:35:13.190 --> 00:35:46.530
Yeah, I mean, and to the point I think you made earlier, I think eMoney did a good job in that 2000 to 2010 timeframe of evolving what planning technology did and how it worked and how advisors used it. I think to your point, we are at that stage where it's going to happen again, how are you going to participate in it?
00:35:42.070 --> 00:35:46.530
Where are you going to put your chips?
00:35:47.150 --> 00:35:58.610
And the thing I was always worried about in the early days of eMoney, and I guess I would say that concern might rise again, is what if something just came out of the blue?
00:35:59.409 --> 00:36:06.489
Somebody who you never contemplated a brand that just come and said, you know what? We're going to get in the advice business.
00:36:06.699 --> 00:36:14.050
We're going to start doing this, and they can throw billions and billions of dollars at it.
00:36:16.570 --> 00:36:32.730
Again, the one thing that this industry always has are the compliance folks to slow down that from happening all the way. And sometimes that's good, sometimes that that's not good.
00:36:33.269 --> 00:36:56.472
So it's funny you say that, like a brand coming out of the blue, I feel like there are risks that every company has, and that's always one, right? But one thing that eMoney did particularly well, that should be a case study in my opinion, for every FinTech that's out there, is create an army of happy client brand ambassadors.
00:36:57.360 --> 00:37:01.570
I know my job at EMO was a thousand times easier because of that.
00:37:01.570 --> 00:37:16.610
When you have clients who are willing to sing your praises, give testimonials, get on camera, all the things becomes a lot harder actually for an outside entrant with all the money in the world to pry those people away, which is.
00:37:16.860 --> 00:37:29.000
Oh, without a doubt. I mean, it was always one of the things that made me sleep easier at night was so much of our business was individual advisor contracts.
00:37:29.000 --> 00:37:36.320
It's not that we didn't want the big enterprise contracts where somebody wrote us a check for a thousand users.
00:37:32.130 --> 00:37:36.320
Those were just fewer and far between.
00:37:36.989 --> 00:37:55.239
And so knowing that you're not going to have somebody come in, a new leader somewhere and all of a sudden decide to go in a different direction and a thousand seats go away at once, you need individual people to make individual decisions.
00:37:55.300 --> 00:38:06.110
And so that was always heartening to me as kind of a little bit of security because we were kind of always making sure that we had those warriors out there.
00:38:06.900 --> 00:38:07.519
Oh my gosh.
00:38:07.519 --> 00:38:14.440
Endless amounts of swag for those people for sure they have for every day of the year. I have no doubt at this point.
00:38:14.550 --> 00:38:16.719
Well, and it brings up an interesting point.
00:38:17.360 --> 00:38:28.550
I don't know if we're there yet in the podcast, but my don't do that or certainly one don't do that that I have, is don't stop doing discovery on your clients.
00:38:31.030 --> 00:38:47.943
There's an endless amount you can learn, and especially in technology when you're building an experience and workflows that people are going to be in every day, you need to stay constantly abreast of what's going on.
00:38:48.110 --> 00:38:52.130
But I think that there's a tendency sometimes somewhat natural.
00:38:53.719 --> 00:38:55.650
I've been doing this for a long time now.
00:38:56.769 --> 00:39:43.409
I know advisors or I know who's making these buying decisions at enterprises, and you have to stay on point and make sure that you continue to engage them in the right way. And not just engaging clients in the traditional relationship management kind of ways, but trying to understand them and their business and their decision making. There's a subtlety there that I think is different, but again, we have a tendency to, I think we even put it sometimes in the literature on websites and everything, oh, we've been in this market for these many years and we know we've been working with these types of people, and I think it's applicable everywhere.
00:39:39.800 --> 00:39:43.409
It's applicable to advisors, right?
00:39:43.690 --> 00:39:58.693
Advisors, some of the best advisors have their own advisor, board of their end clients. I mean, who better because who populates the end clients of advisory firms?
00:39:58.960 --> 00:40:06.929
It's successful people who've built their own products or built their own businesses. And so again, I'll throw an anecdote back to Edmond.
00:40:06.929 --> 00:40:11.690
In those early days, we used to go out and do client appreciation nights.
00:40:12.469 --> 00:40:20.130
It was great for us because we could showcase the technology and advisors could tell their clients, Hey, this is what you can have access to.
00:40:21.190 --> 00:40:33.449
But the best advisors use that as an opportunity to also query those clients about changes they're making. Again, it could be change to their onboarding process. What do you think about that?
00:40:33.449 --> 00:40:36.360
Should I make this change to their pricing?
00:40:36.750 --> 00:40:44.690
And so it's particularly germane in the tech space that I've been in, but it's a universal thing. I think.
00:40:45.840 --> 00:40:48.480
I love that. Don't do that. Don't stop talking to your clients.
00:40:48.900 --> 00:41:20.929
So it's funny you say that. I was going to say this earlier, but this even aligns better. I have lots of FinTech clients, I have lots of advisor clients, and I get particularly perturbed when folks use lines like by advisors for advisors or co-created with advisors or just all the things that we used back in the day, not because they're stealing the language, because whatever, do what you're going to do.
00:41:21.030 --> 00:41:39.210
And there's only so many words that can be used for some of this stuff sometimes, but because I saw it be so real, atmo so real when we said for advisors, by advisors, I mean exactly what you just said.
00:41:39.750 --> 00:41:45.822
The advisors were literally sitting alongside designing the technology.
00:41:46.300 --> 00:41:46.530
And.
00:41:46.530 --> 00:41:53.769
So now I have a heat come over me when a client of mine wants to use that language just to use that language.
00:41:54.239 --> 00:41:54.730
Because.
00:41:54.730 --> 00:42:04.320
They think they're going to get attention with it, with no real substance behind it. Because I saw it with you guys so intensely, and it was so true and so real. The co-creation was.
00:42:05.219 --> 00:42:11.010
Legit. And that's why Kelly, I think it's important for eMoney to keep an eye on that ball.
00:42:11.070 --> 00:42:19.130
It was one thing when you had a former advisor, CEO, and founder doing it because you always had that.
00:42:19.880 --> 00:42:25.210
When that's out of the picture, you have to rely on those advisors that much more.
00:42:25.269 --> 00:42:32.010
You have to rely on using them as sounding boards, using them to test your ideas all along the way.
00:42:32.010 --> 00:42:55.483
Because what's amazing over the years, one of the big things that I didn't necessarily anticipate, but it's not about those big huge changes all the time because you can make small, subtle changes in the technology that free up or create a seamless way to move through something where there was always a block before.
00:42:55.670 --> 00:42:59.800
And so sometimes those small ones are just as impactful.
00:43:00.300 --> 00:43:02.969
And honestly, that's what the longtime users are looking for.
00:43:02.969 --> 00:43:08.639
They've already bought in to eMoney as a platform and how we do things for them.
00:43:08.639 --> 00:43:13.210
It's all about how do we create those efficiencies and how do we get 'em through it even that much quicker?
00:43:13.989 --> 00:43:17.929
So our friend Drew, what's up?
00:43:13.989 --> 00:43:22.210
Drew, you better be listening to, this is over at sox, and I am going to help lead their advisory board.
00:43:22.550 --> 00:43:25.250
And I am very advisory board.
00:43:25.449 --> 00:43:46.489
Snobby meant because I've seen it done bad and I've seen it done good and seeing eMoney do it the way that they did their advisory board, but all of their client relationships really, and utilize that as, it's almost like you get extra employees, you get extra brains, you get extra hands. And there's so many companies out there that I'm like, come on, you don't have to do this by yourself.
00:43:47.340 --> 00:43:54.840
You can extend your capacity by so much and with such willing participants if you just think through this correctly.
00:43:54.960 --> 00:43:57.889
Well, and we were fortunate.
00:43:58.559 --> 00:44:01.570
They were literally some of the best out there.
00:44:01.789 --> 00:44:27.489
So they had their own channels, they had their own audiences, and so it multiplied dramatically by getting them onboard and invested in that process. Yeah, and again, particularly important when you're trying to grow what you're trying to get from a couple of 3, 4, 5 years in to that different level, that different place.
00:44:34.909 --> 00:44:41.730
So for those of you listening, we're talking to the one, the head of financial planning at eMoney Advisor for the last.
00:44:41.730 --> 00:44:42.889
25 Years.
00:44:43.340 --> 00:44:45.929
Who just hung up his uniform.
00:44:46.769 --> 00:44:51.769
I am still having a hard time believing it, so I'm going to check back in six months and see if it's still hung up.
00:44:51.769 --> 00:44:52.603
Please do.
00:44:52.630 --> 00:45:03.840
But his don't do. That is one for everybody, but particularly for our FinTech folks out there, and that is don't stop listening to your clients and staying close to them.
00:45:04.269 --> 00:45:24.469
So Matt, bring us home with a couple of examples of advisor driven innovations that would just never have been if you guys wouldn't have stayed so close to your users. I'm not trying to stump you. No.
00:45:24.469 --> 00:45:48.130
No, no. So I think that one of the most important ones that was almost exclusively advisor driven is the importance of the integrations that we do. And being particular, not just doing everything for everybody who wants to connect.
00:45:49.400 --> 00:46:21.090
They have their own reasons for wanting to do that, but the truly meaningful ones where there's a bi-directional flow of information, there's tangible changes on both sides. And again, so many of those come from those advisor reactions and advisor connections because again, they're in a much better position than we are to tell us why it will be so impactful as a technology vendor.
00:46:21.719 --> 00:46:27.500
You're aware of things, but you're not doing it day in and day out the way they are in their offices.
00:46:27.880 --> 00:46:31.179
And so they can shine a light there.
00:46:32.079 --> 00:46:59.500
That's harder for us to just instinctively understand as we're building things out. And then another one, I guess I'll just throw out there, and it is more generic because it doesn't apply to necessarily a specific feature or function, but it's how advisors have shaped how we choose to do reporting in our system.
00:46:54.559 --> 00:47:00.280
Everybody's got their way, everybody.
00:47:00.280 --> 00:47:41.329
And to be able to leverage the ideas across that broad range and pull the best parts and create, whether it's online, whether it's the ones that have to be printed for compliance reasons, creating the visualizations that they know will be most impactful as they're sitting there next to the client doing their planning thing. So that's a bit more generic, but it's bringing to bear what works, what doesn't work. And so many, especially back in the day, so many advisors, they have their own ways of doing some of those things.
00:47:41.469 --> 00:47:57.360
So it's not that they're operating from nothing. They have their own, some of 'em have built their own spreadsheets and their own analysis, and they serve as tremendous lead-ins to what ultimately might be developed. But that was a couple.
00:47:58.489 --> 00:48:03.840
I love it. So Matt, we're coming up on the end of our time together.
00:48:04.449 --> 00:48:13.360
I feel like it is rare in this day and age where someone stays at a company for as long as you stay at Anymo.
00:48:14.309 --> 00:48:33.250
And I think we've touched on some of the reasons why, but I want to just end this with you articulating what was the gravitational pull over the years to make this be sort of your life's work?
00:48:28.559 --> 00:48:33.250
Because just don't see it.
00:48:35.079 --> 00:48:50.043
Yeah, you don't. And I take some great pride in that, but this might sound a little silly, but I am kind of this hopeless romantic at heart.
00:48:50.429 --> 00:49:14.070
And so when you're involved with something from the beginning, you want to see it grow. You want to see what's next. And when you're, I don't want to say satisfied because satisfied is the wrong word, but when you're feeling so good about what you're doing and you just want that to keep going, there is a bit of contentment there.
00:49:14.170 --> 00:49:20.340
Not that people shouldn't be challenged from that, but that definitely plays a part.
00:49:16.530 --> 00:49:43.710
And then the people, I mean, we've touched on people a few times today, right? You build a team, you work with people across the company, so many of them sharing the same passion for solving problems, whatever those problems are on this side of the company, it might be in building new stuff on that side, it might be getting this client interested in something new, but just really passionate.
00:49:40.170 --> 00:49:46.860
We've done a pretty good job maintaining the culture.
00:49:48.019 --> 00:50:15.030
It's not startup culture that's a unique culture and that has its own time span or lifespan, but kind of maintaining a culture where that can live and where there can be some of that working with advisors and bringing them in and when that's part of the process, it's just really invigorating. I mean, I can't tell you how grateful I am.
00:50:15.219 --> 00:50:18.789
I've been to every corner of the country on behalf of eMoney.
00:50:19.260 --> 00:50:22.510
I've met thousands of advisors of all stripes.
00:50:24.269 --> 00:50:31.730
A lot of them, well, all of 'em have a very similar mission, but they all do it uniquely.
00:50:28.070 --> 00:50:43.969
They all do it their own way, and it's been a pleasure to kind of absorb all of that and then figure out, okay, how can I then take that and apply it any number of different places?
00:50:44.670 --> 00:50:47.010
It was a unique experience I've used this term.
00:50:47.750 --> 00:50:52.449
It has been my own little version of the American Dream.
00:50:52.590 --> 00:51:12.449
It really has to start something from nothing to grow it, to have an exit from it financially and to do it with people you enjoy doing it with. I mean, it doesn't get any better than that. I mean, I don't like the term lucky because Lucky connotes randomness, right?
00:51:13.110 --> 00:51:15.329
I've been fortunate.
00:51:13.110 --> 00:51:15.329
I've been very fortunate.
00:51:16.730 --> 00:51:30.909
You didn't cry, but I might. Oh my gosh, I feel like, I feel like eMoney and all the advisors and all the employees were the lucky ones. You are just the best, and I love you so much.
00:51:31.639 --> 00:51:33.309
Thank you. I appreciate that.
00:51:33.889 --> 00:51:53.559
But I wish you the very, very best and anybody that nabs you to help them with anything on the go forward, guys, he's a free agent, so he's going to take some time, but I don't believe it's going to be that long unless his wife makes it. So if you need one of the best people, he's your guy. I love you so much, man.
00:51:53.920 --> 00:51:54.360
So you.
00:51:54.360 --> 00:51:54.760
Kelly, love you too.
00:51:54.760 --> 00:51:55.592
Congratulations.
00:51:55.610 --> 00:51:57.110
On your retirement. Thank you.
00:51:57.320 --> 00:52:07.800
I don't even feel like this podcast even touched the surface of all the things, guys. We could tell you some crazy stories about the many days, but he and I are going to go talk about those once we cut the recording.
00:52:07.900 --> 00:52:09.480
So thanks for listening. Go Matt.
00:52:10.070 --> 00:52:11.960
Take care. Love you. Bye Bye-Bye.
00:52:14.860 --> 00:52:17.840
Thanks so much for tuning in.
00:52:14.860 --> 00:52:25.679
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00:52:26.829 --> 00:52:38.559
This podcast is sponsored by intentionally a financial services growth engine, design, consultancy and agency. If you want to learn more, please email me at Kelly@growintentionally.com.
00:52:39.130 --> 00:52:43.239
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00:52:44.739 --> 00:52:52.353
The information covered and posted represents the views and opinions of the guest and does not necessarily represent the views or opinions of Kelly Waltrich.
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