ROffice with Andrew Evans | E119

welcome to the financial planning for Canadian business owners podcast you will hear about industry insights with award-winning financial planner and entrepreneur Jason Pereira through the interviews with different experts with their stories and advice you will learn how you can navigate the challenges of being an entrepreneur plan for success and make the most of your business and life and now your host Jason

Pereira hello and welcome to fin playing for Canan business owners I'm your host Jason perer now preface this I've been on sabatical with this podcast for quite some time and that came from the fact that I felt like I covered almost everything out there but enough has changed that frankly I think we're going to be revisiting a lot of old topics from taxation to corporate structure to accounting to everything I expect to see this schedule start to pick up and be more regular very shortly but in order

to kick it off I'm happy to kick this off with something not Finance related but operationally related I have Andrew Evans founder of our office with me and he is going to talk to you about Outsourcing to a virtual assistant specifically how his company operates and what it does and how you should be thinking about reaching out for virtual assistance in the future and with that here's my name with Andrew Andrew thanks for Tak the

time today hey thanks for having me I really appreciate it no so Andrew Evans of our office tell us about our office so our office so I we have let's not do the the typical comment I'll say it like this zero regulated firms are properly staffed you either have too much or you have too little and advisors have Lo start to

lose their ability to properly service clients efficiently and a lot of that is because they have no capacity to do so with the additional regulations or tools or say things that are put upon them that they have to do themselves now in our current day and age and with that is that's where we come in our office then

steps in as a place for any advisor or firm to really rightsize their personnel buy or sell your capacity I need more help on portfolio creation but I don't have time to plug everything into Morning Star hire that out or I've got a full-time planner but I don't have full-time work for them sell off that

capacity go Airbnb about it that's really our general take on it is rightsize your personnel and get yourself properly staffed increase your capacity or or put it where it needs to be yeah let me just go back and and clarify that basically you're specifically working in my industry in the financial advisory industry so that's why you're talking so much about this but frankly a lot of what we're going to talk about almost everything we're going to talk about applies in

general to any business and virtual assistance in general that about right that's true yep absolutely I think we we don't have we don't have as an industry we don't really have uh uh different business problems than anybody else we have different regulatory problems we have different privacy concerns I've got a good friend he works at Google and as part of all of their search and data and he tends to say boy I wish we had more

regulation because when I tell him about the regulation we has he goes well that would be great if we had that yeah across the board I think we have more of a regulatory and privacy issue over top of what are normal everyday business concerns okay so very valid all right so let's talk about virtual assistance I will say that I end up referring to con referring to concept of virtual assistance by frequently when talking to advisers when they're talking about

difficulties they're having scaling because too often the concept of what it is to expand a team is binary it is a full human being or it is no one so talk to me about and I always say virtual assistants are the beautiful Middle Ground where you basically get to have a quarter three quarters whatever else it is that you need before you make the commitments talk to me about that decision- making thinking and that that that way of thinking about when to look

out for when to look to hire a virtual assistant yeah so that I I think we it's fun to talk about that question of it's because that's been the solution is you either go from nothing to a fully burdened employee um and with the costs and time and so forth so we typically look at it in

terms of a conversation starter or when you sit down and you're sitting in front of red tail okay and this is just my this is my anecdote you're sitting in front of red tail and you say to yourself okay I've got 250 clients and the holidays are coming I now need to do

the holiday um greeting card and cookie distribution okay do you really want to sit there and do that or do you want to or do you want to be having your appointments with your clients to talk about planning for the next year you want to meet with those clients but it's at that point when you look at what is otherwise we'll call it a client service

or more of a mundane task as soon as a mundane task comes into your head that's when you know it's time to hire somebody fractionally because if we're talking about the Cookie list that'll be my I might carry that on throughout our entire discussion so when you're looking at the Cookie list do you really need to hire somebody at for 35,000 a year 65,000 a year to do your cookie list and

then sit around for the rest of the time no but you it would make more sense to buy a few blocks of time from somebody hey I want to buy five hours of your time uh I'll give you access proper channels disclosures you have access to my red tail pull the list scrub it for people who are active and then take that upload it into the Harry and David website track it down give me the bill

great done moving on I I just give that to somebody to do I gave them the list they do it that's the end of it excellent so yeah and let's face it there's always work in the business where you're just like I wish I had time for this thing to get done so you find yourself either doing quote unquote less Mission critical work than the ministry tical work taking away from your Revenue

generating abilities or that work being done after hours because effectively you're or some work being done after hours because you don't have enough hours in the day or gets passed on or just gets forgotten or not done altogether so it is nice way to basically find the help you need without committing the full body right so where do you feel to your experience what's the mentality or what point that people get to before they realize they need

that kind of help oh it's they it's difficult I think if you any adviser right now who listens to this to say to say that no no I've got it all figured out they don't because there's always something that that pops up that you weren't expecting so I think it's more of a rationalization of acceptance of can I really do this myself can I really do

this myself should I do this myself and I think they break down so the a Tipping Point would be um CE is due you have to do an an an annual mailing you don't have enough appointments booked you're trying to hit an asset new asset Target you're trying to now get your plans out the door oh by the way your in-laws are coming to town and oh I don't know your

annual renews are up okay so I'm picking things off the top of my head that just happen and out of all of these things there's a lot here that I could just hand off to somebody to do while I just focus on say dealing with my in-laws and and getting plans out the door there's no reason that I have to be worrying about pressing the buttons to get my registration done to book myself for a c

i can have somebody else just take care of that I can hire somebody else to call through my client list to book appointments it's no different than which I think is a very efficient business dentist office they're great at having their office manager just pick up the phone and start to call through and say hey it's been X months since you're cleaning let's get you booked go on this time but is that person cleaning your

teeth no does that person know your intimate details of your health history no is that person going to give you Direction on I don't know of your proper Gum Care no they're just making phone calls to book an appointment so that the dentist calendar is filled the same thing should apply with advisers you don't and you don't need to hire somebody full-time to do that you can hire somebody on on on a part-time on a

fractional basis that you give them access to The Client List and numbers and they make phone calls and then they put them on your calendar and what's that going to cost you a month maybe 500 bucks but that 500 bucks leads to let's call it 30 appointments with your clients to do annual reviews to help them satisfy what they need and you'll probably find some more opportunities you'll probably get more referrals that

way because you have somebody at a very to you actively giving them that touch Point um I might rant here and you guys might want to chop this up but many times we've all been in a practice management meeting where they talk about the best practices of client touch or whatever is you do this on this date this on this date this one week and three weeks and two months and you just have to build this process and here's

your spreadsheet and do it most advisers look at that and say I'm never going to do any of that because it's too much but but with hiring somebody on a fractional basis that you only need say for 4 hours a week you could hire them give them that that Master spreadsheet of what whatever T told you to do this or whatever practice management company

told you to do this and say here do that and that's their job and you don't have to worry about it you're just going to provide some content you're going to provide some Direction but now you've outsourced it you didn't have to hire that you didn't have to hire a social media manager graduate out of Virginia Tech at 85,000 a year you hired John Smith over

in Oklahoma who is providing this service at 3545 $65 an hour and you're only using them 10 hours a month because that's all you need that's my rant like it it's you don't have to overthink all of these massive plans that practice management people put out you you'll never get to it excellent okay so you talked about the buying or selling of services what

do you do on the actual buying of services in this regard people come to you with virtual virtual assistants come to you and say hey I've got excess hours or do advisers or people in the marketplace come to you and try to trade off their hours yeah absolutely yep yeah that that's exactly what happens we're actually in talks with many people right now there's a there's actually a growing amount of people that want to fractionally provide uh paraplanning

services and we're all about that we want to be that connector to help them find advisers that need a paraplanner where we step in though in all these things we do take a level of compliance for that because you can't just sign up your firm needs to know what's going on you are sharing some data there but let me put that to the side for a second but we do have a lot of PR People Media folk people have been in the industry for

many years who just say you know what I don't really want to work for somebody I just want to work for myself myself transition assistants people who love doing transitions they come to us and they're starting to sign up with our service for us to help connect them to firms and individual advisers to then hire them so we it's not like we reinvented the wheel here it's along the lines of using LIF or Airbnb is that

we're trying to be that Marketplace to put people with skills that have capacity in front of people that don't have that skill or have a need that don't want to pay for it fulltime but a lot of people are coming out of the woodwork to say but I've got an extra 10 hours to to offer I've got an extra five I can I'm only working part-time now at XYZ I can work another part-time with you and I can work with a Max of four

advisers it's happening it's very interesting we are in a gig economy so we're trying to advance that forward and help people meet each other and it's interesting too because I'm wondering is anyone come to you yet basically saying look I took on a staff member and we have excess capacity maybe I could take it have them take out some hours from you because I look at that as maybe that's the other way around is instead of waiting to hire that person maybe I actually have part of their salary covered by generating Revenue by

Outsourcing their services that that's how we started that's we had myself and and my partner Chris Marco he had still has an admin that he's paying fulltime and very brilliant and he said and it was a it wasn't that we got it at the exact same time it's that he said boy I just I'm paying her full-time but I don't really have fulltime work and I was like oh okay and then with my

travels and in my background working with a lot of advisers a lot of these advisers were saying boy I really need an admin but I don't really want to pay for someone fulltime but I want someone who already knows these systems so it was all we were all in the same firm at the same time and so Chris and I think that's when the light bulb went through they're go hey wait a minute if she's got an extra 20 hours to give okay

because she's not working and and I talking through it said great let's let's provide that 20 hours to these other people and we put a Max that she couldn't go over 16 hours so everybody picked off what they did we did the billing to them it paid to us I paid that to Chris Chris offset the

salary that's how we did it so she didn't so even though she had more and this is for the business owners out there even though she had more work to do that wasn't technically that advisor's work she's still being paid for that amount of capacity of work it's I don't think humans are machines so please don't think that but if I have a

machine that is designed to make 50,000 units of whatever per day and I'm only using and I'm only making 10,000 well I'm then going to go out to other manufacturers say you can utilize my tool to get your capacity as well again I I don't think humans are machines or that they should be treated like that

it's just that idea of if I'm paying you fulltime um then I'm going to use your time to the best and if we're going to then Outsource Your Capacity to this person whatever Revenue comes in and we tell advisers this now and we have two others that are doing this when that Capac when that Revenue comes in it's just offsetting your salary okay and I know a lot of people would much rather

just work a third of the time but get paid for 100% of the time I get that however if you're employed by this person that's paying your benefits that's all part of it so we're agnostic to how somebody wants to do it you can offset salary or you could pay it out directly to them it doesn't matter to us okay all right so talk to me about the security aspects of this because if I'm passing along CLI information there

are concerns about making sure that is a secure transfer and that the person I'm passing it off to isn't justone with it how do you address those concerns yeah so for anybody that that wants to be a part of our anybody wants to join our platform any provider as we call them that's our nomenclature is a virtual a virtual assistant is a provider so any provider that wants to join first and foremost we actually do a

full background check with them utilizing the national company called Checker so we want to know about them we do a light a very soft credit check on them an employment check res residential check because we're only dealing with us-based providers that's another major thing so we do a pretty solid background check which we would provide to anybody so we know that they are who they are they are

us-based and then the kind of the other side of that is and this goes firm by firm some firms ask that we have an agreement in place so that we understand who's engaged where is it the advisor's responsibility is it the firm's responsibility is that provider's responsibility so we delineate that with a firm as to how do you want to work

with us our AAS don't aren't necessarily that uh concerned they're pretty good at accepting that um but background check get a solid agreement with that firm and then we do check-ins uh with both sides as business is going along meaning okay how to the provider how are you being treated are you being talked to appropriately are you being given work

that is a appropriate for you to do on the flip side of that talking to the adviser who contracted for the time how is the work product is this being delivered how you want it to be also we screen the advisers that want to access our Marketplace because we also have some concerns over people who we'll do it we'll do a we'll do a broker check on

them because now we're concerned like we don't want to be allowing too many advisers on that say uh have been uh overly suspended by finra or have a ton of tax leans that have a history of non-payment have a history of termination for failure to produce and things like that because again we want to take that level uh back to our providers to make sure that they are also going to get paid so a little bit

down of a rabbit hole there for you but then the other thing too is we will help them receive if the firm's cyber security policy doesn't cut the this person that they hired it typically does all right honestly and truly it typically does then we provide an outlet for that provider to also have

cyber coverage through us or some of them actually come in with their own coverage and we actually ask for verification of that as well all right oh on on security any of the any of the systems that any provider is given access to is being given access to by that advisor so if you're getting access

to Red Tail you're getting it from that advisor so we also say to that advisor remember you're still the administrator of your business you still need to main maintain control over what is yours over your e-money your red tail your risk your morning star and if you feel like something isn't right you have the ability to turn it off that's still on you the adviser to figure that out excellent so still at the end of the day

the security controls are all held by the person delegating yep excellent and that's always that's the way it's always going to be excellent so give me a sec while I have this part out okay all right so you actually got ahead of me there I was gonna ask about the technical security aspects but you beat me to it all right so let's talk about for someone who's never done this before and is a little bit frightened by like what do you what would you say to them in order to get them going first

I'd say Don't Panic for all of our hitch hackers Guide to the Galaxy friends out there don't panic do the due diligence first take some time um think about what it means to have a virtual provider and what are the actual tasks that you would have that person do so just literally think what are they going to do and um a

little cerebral but then think about what are you doing now as an adviser that is anything different than what that person is asking to do does that person really need to be physically in your office office do you really need somebody to physically open and close doors inside of your and if the answer is no if you realize that there's no

physical reason that task in your mind that needs to be done by a human in your office then that is your first step to say I'm ready to gain somebody on a virtual basis to which I'd say to also all of your listeners if you have ever utilized a an internal wholesaler

they've actually been acting almost as a virtual assistant to you especially with a lot of the insurance companies I need I need an illustration I need this paperwork I need this pre-filled so on and so on very few of the things that we actually do as advisers are a physical labor in your office anyway so just take that into perspective but take your time do due diligence on what are the tasks

that you don't want to do that have no requ requirement for a physical person in your office to do them once you have that now do a simple Google search I mean seriously just Google what that person does see who else is out there see what else uh has happened at other firms and you'll find very quickly that

you're you're in a place that people are already doing this this is a very common it's very common a lot of firms are uh a lot of major firms already work remotely anyway it's just that they're they're an employee excellent all right a great way to get started so basically Andrew thank you very much for taking the time today greatly appreciated it where can people find you when they want to find when they want to seek you so for us our the

website our office. team so that's the letter R office you can find us there and then please find me on LinkedIn look me up Andrew J Evans I do full and fair disclosure I have two I have two profiles because I do make maintain a registered investment advisory firm full and fair disclosure you do those things you learn those things everything that we learned there is how we learned that

what more and more can be outsourced virtually so either either company might be R&D for the other I don't quite know yet but find me on LinkedIn find me on Twitter hey find me on the Graham I'm there you can see pictures of M dog it's great I go to Disney World a lot you'll love it excellent all right excellent thank you so much Andrew all the best

thanks so that was today's episode so that was today's episode of fincial plank for Canan business owners hope you find that enjoyable if you're in the US or if you're actually just looking if you're in Canada looking to work with an outsourced provider in the space absolutely zero reason why you should be looking you shouldn't be looking at dealing with someone like Andrew's company and before you go there there is no law that prevents Canadians from having data stored on a foreign server go back and listen to my interview with bamboo Consulting we will dis dis spell.

net as always if you enjoyed this podcast please leave youreview an apple podcast SoundCloud Spotify where visit your podcast until next time take care this podcast was brought to you by Woodgate Financial an award-winning financial planning firm catering to high net worth individuals business owners and their families to learn more go to Woodgate tocom you can subscribe to this

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