Days of giving this series is phenomenal. Everyone’s loving it and I’m so excited to have lay on here, by the way, everyone else go back to the episode that we have recorded for her personally to learn about her firm and everything that she has going on as another minority CFP. That’s right. Go us. But today we’re going to learn about a story client story from lay and I’m really excited to dig into this, as and your excitement for this series too. So let’s just, let’s start off with. The profile of the client and where

Lei Deng, CFA, CFP®:
0:27

you want to go with that. Yeah. I, yeah, I remember when you were telling me about this serious, I was, I honestly, I was so excited about this because sometimes it’s hard to really explain. Okay. What do you do for financial planning? I tend to tell people everything about money and. Sometimes people are like, oh, great. Some people, sometimes people give me a blank stare. What does that even mean? So I, I really feel like this helps people to understand what we actually do. Yeah so I generally help, children of immigrants, small business owners, and, and I love the emotional behavioral side of money as well. This couple, I think it’s the perfect example, mid career family, young family that fits straight into that. So the, so the wife is so her upbringing is, normal mid class American, but she is children as a child of immigrant. Husband grew up in the more he is definitely more of a 1st generation wealth builder and coming from a childhood, much more unstable finances. We’re talking about not really sure where next meal comes from a lot of stress. A lot of. Uncertainty about money, and as we all know, childhood memories can definitely manifest into things into our adulthood. Yeah, so this has and then the wife works at a startup company very, that did really well for herself has. 2, 3 access her income in the past several years and then husband is, went back to school and also, now has a general contracting businesses and I really find it easy and. Great working with service based business owners, too, because we really get each other, so so I think our philosophy of how we treat clients is very similar. We want transparency. We are really high level service of businesses like, white glove, high level of service. So it’s really so we really hit it off on business philosophy that. That part they’re in their mid thirties, so similar to where I am. So honestly, a lot of times looking at them, an interracial couple, they are interracial couple too. I sometimes feel like I’m looking at a mirror. Yeah, some of our best clients are like that, that’s where they are. They what they are, they live in the Pacific Northwest. And yeah, and we we would just love talking about everything, getting them organized on their money and really helping them achieving their life goals, that’s ultimate, that’s not, it’s much more than money, right? Help them being comfortable about money. And then if we have any that we didn’t know are biased towards money, I’m not a therapist. I can’t do that for them, but I can at least point out sometimes if we have any things that can help us to, to. Work on our money mindsets how to make money work for us instead of the other way around. So yeah, just a general profile of this couple.

Stoy Hall, CFP®:
3:27

First question I have is how did they get, how did you hire them? How did they find you? How did the relationship start?

Lei Deng, CFA, CFP®:
3:33

I have no idea. I think it was a referral from another financial planner. Yeah I think so. Yeah. We were talking, a while ago on, having a clear defined niche is that people find you. People know who you are and people find you. And I think, especially for this 1, there are 2 things that stood out. 1 of them is the children, child of immigrant component. And another 1 is service business. So that fits really clearly into my niche with both components present, like also mid, mid career family. So all three components are present in this couple. So it was really great fit, honestly. So yeah, so that’s how they found me. I think it’s

Stoy Hall, CFP®:
4:11

important. A couple of things you said there. Was one and most likely came from another planner, which in our industry, that’s, that’s, that doesn’t happen as much often, although it is starting to pick up because we have all, we all have our specialties and we all want the client at the end of the day to be the most comfortable to get the best service they can. And that gets me into the 2nd point is they fit to you so well, because they essentially are you right? Just in a different industry and that makes clients feel so comfortable because they know where you came from. They know. Basically that you can see what they see and just take them to the next level. I think it’s vitally important for prospective clients out there to recognize is find someone who you can relate to. So that way, some of that, when things go awry or things go a certain way, that they have your back because. They could feel that too. And I really wanted

Lei Deng, CFA, CFP®:
5:03

to. Absolutely. Yeah. And I think one of the things really for them is that they feel understood. And I don’t think that was as much, when we first get to know each other, it was just like, okay, I have a quick conversation from my company, my husband has a business Let’s work together. We really need to get this thing organized. And then through the conversation, through, the discovery sessions we really come to this understanding that they feel understood and heard. They feel like their values are respected. I think that’s really important because you, money is such a touchy subject, if you’re trying to as planner, it’s really, like you said with referring, it also shows humbleness. It shows that we don’t know everything we I don’t want to, pretend that I know everything. For this topic, it’s not in my wheelhouse. I’m trying to get someone else to do it that is in their wheelhouse. And I love how. Diverse and awesome and sometimes crazy our niches are, so it’s really good that honestly if you think of something, you can find someone to help with a specific niche. So that shows humbleness and I think a lot of times for a planner, you really got to be humble and be able to listen and just really strip away your own biases, when you go into the client meeting, when you put yourself in their shoes and really think from their perspective. So once you are able to do that, you can gain their trust, and then you can gain their trust and then be able to really solve the problem that they’re facing. With money being a bit of a touchy subject with something everything we do touches money, that if you can show that you understand them, that they can trust you to help guide them with decisions that are so important in their lives. I thought that was really awesome that we’re able to go through all of this and come to an understanding like, hey, nobody else has asked me what I’m going to do do, and there are, I know there are a lot of other planners that ask this question, but from their experiences nobody really asked me anybody else that I need to be financially responsible for, because as children of immigrant, it’s really easy sometimes our parents need us to be their financial plan, need us to be their Retirement plan, so that is really important and very common and really important for us to discuss, in this situation, what are we going to do? And the answer is, it might be no sometimes, but a lot of times it is, yes, it is something we’ve got to think about. Okay, how do we take care of our immigrant parents? Yeah so that was really fun. Yeah, so long winded answer.

Stoy Hall, CFP®:
7:49

They fit you guys connect very well and deeply. What was their first pain point or need when they came to you immediately? What was the thing that they were like, this is what we need help with?

Lei Deng, CFA, CFP®:
7:59

It, this might sound silly, but I think you might be able to echo with that. It’s organization, like they, so many moving parts. we Got to think like the budget, it’s really core part of it and then retirement plan, like employee benefits, equity compensation, small business owner and 1 of the specific 1, the 1st, it’s organization and the specific 1 is if they should. Do S corp for the husband’s business. And at first, if you look at the revenue, if you’re just like, like on top of your head, you’re like, it makes sense. It could be helpful. Let’s get down a little bit deeper. And then we’re going through some exercises and I really get into that’s where the goals and the values are so important. We’re really trying to get into and see what’s the most important to them. And it turns out the really important thing for them is to catch up retirement savings for the husband. And they are contemplating of hiring an employee, honest, these things are fluid, but at that moment, with all of these things considered, really, the best thing to do to get to really speed this up is to not have an escort because, as that impacts how much retirement. Contribution, you can have what type of, if you have an employee or not have an employee, what type of retirement plan you can have. So that was a very specific. So it was a 1, very specific question and a general pretty open, thing about money that a lot of people come to me. The first thing is organization.

Stoy Hall, CFP®:
9:31

Organization is a hundred percent. Like everyone, we all have it. It doesn’t matter. Organization is far and foremost, the most important piece of what we do, because if you don’t get organized and good luck piecing it all. Yeah. And I think that ties back into a lot with the emotions. We talk about it. You talked about it earlier, knowing the emotional side and know where they came from and where they’re at helps get organized more efficiently. And then we talk about goals and development of esports or whatever, right? These two parts need to come first, and they always should. And I don’t think, and quote me if I’m wrong, but that is not a short, that’s not a very fast process either. You can’t just meet with them and be like, Hey, we connect, cool, what’s all your stuff? Okay, we’re organized, a week later. I want people to recognize that financial planning. And your wealth journey are a forever life thing. There are parts that are very organized and going very well. There are parts that are disorganized, not going very well and everything in between and it takes time. So if you’re sitting here listening, going that sounds like me, you’ve got time. Like you, you have time to hire someone,

Lei Deng, CFA, CFP®:
10:40

you have time. It’s never too late. It’s never too late. I have people coming to me. Like late twenties, early thirties, feel like they’ve missed the boat. I have people coming in their late forties to almost their fifties or even later. I don’t have many of these clients. I do have a couple of them in the age group. They also feel like the miss honestly, though. The best time to start is today, so it’s never too late. You can always, there’s always the good thing about financial planning is there’s always something you can do to make it better, to help improve your current situation. There’s almost always something to do. So absolutely.

Stoy Hall, CFP®:
11:17

So these clients came in need an organized one and thinking that they’re going to ask corporate route because of. XYZ, but working with you ended up going, Hey no. Based upon what you want to do and your goals to fit your plan, you back them out of the escort situation for now. For now and bump them into what happened after that. So you got organized to figure out what they wanted to do and then stop them and said, Hey, this route is going to be a little better. Talk us through that second route and where, what came from that.

Lei Deng, CFA, CFP®:
11:50

So our plan right now, we haven’t implemented it yet, but our plan right now is to go straight with a just a sole proprietorship and. Life is fluid and sometimes plans are fluid. It’s iterative. It’s exactly your point made earlier situation changed. We might not have an employee anymore. So with all of this changes combined, we’re like, actually it’s perfect. So we can think about, really having a solo 401k in this business to really help you put away a lot of money, really to help you get to the point of what you want to do. Again, all of the actions, all of the clients, we will go through the values discovery process. And then we will always make decisions. We always can come back and connect back to the values. Look, security is part of the value that you’ve chosen. So we really need to connect this. This is this putting away a lot of money. Is goes directly back into the security part that you were talking about, because that was something that was lacking, for you before. And that’s why you chose this 1. that’s what we’re doing this. So it’s really just that’s how everything connects together. Yeah, so so it’s really powerful to when things work out like this. Yeah, so it’s pretty great. So we’re on our way to. To use, saving a lot of money as a way to achieve security, financial, especially financial security in their lives. And yeah.

Stoy Hall, CFP®:
13:25

So you hit upon, it’s a, it’s like an amoeba. It’s moving. It’s always adjusting, it’s flexible. It’s every financial plan. I don’t ever, like I started 12 years ago and we used to like deliver. Like the Bible of a financial plan, like the whole big and I never understood it because by the time I delivered it. Something changed. Something changed, something happened. So I wanna get, I wanna focus on the flexibility and the changing of things. The people listening are going that means I have to communicate a lot. That means I have to talk to you all the time. Isn’t that gonna run up my bills? Isn’t that gonna cost a lot? Can you talk through how often you’re speaking specifically to this client through these changes and what that looks like for you, but also what you believe is best for

Lei Deng, CFA, CFP®:
14:06

clients. So before we do that, I want to touch on the subject of fee models. There’s

Stoy Hall, CFP®:
14:19

that are like, not advisors are like, huh?

Lei Deng, CFA, CFP®:
14:24

It’s a big topic in the advisor community. I honestly, my stance is there’s no right or wrong, right? There are a lot of different ways to charge. There are a lot of different ways to serve the clients. It just, as long as it aligns with your service. And I think it’s okay, but for me, I find it because I’m very planning focused, even though I come from an investment background, but I’m very planning focused. And I really want to be the person that the clients call, like, whenever something big happened to them, they call me, they email me. So I wanted to be the 1st person to know that happened, so I wanted this experience for my clients to be like, Hey, I have something. I’m not sure if this how this can impact my financial life. I want to tell a, she can help us figure it out. I want to beat that. So I want them to not be afraid to reach out to me. When I have a question, I want them to feel free to always communicate with me, talk to me. And honestly, it sounds like, okay, we’re having conversation every day. No nobody wants to talk to their financial planner every day, nobody does. But I wanted to make sure that they feel like I’m here for them whenever they need to. iN that sense, I wanted to be so I find just a overall planning fee to be much more All right. A better suited for my service, so if I have hourly, my hesitation is that and I have planners that do hourly that do really good job that, does a fantastic job. But for me, sometimes I’m worried that. Would it deter them from contacting me? If they have a question, would they lead to a situation where they try to withhold information from me just because they don’t want to run up the bill? But no, but for me, because it’s a flat fee, everything is included so you can contact me as much as you like, or as little, but just know that I’m here for you here to answer your questions, help you. I can’t solve your problem, but we can sit on together and brainstorm and come up with solutions. Yeah. So typically this couple, like we actually, this is much more frequent than my normal clients. We normally have a six month onboarding period where we get into some really deep conversations. Like we talk about childhood, we talk about their marriage. We talk about, we’ll have a conversation where they’re just talking about how much they love each other. That’s just so sweet, like what they love about each other, how much they love each other. And honestly, these are the best conversations. You really get to know who they are. So we have because of these, we are really deep in conversation. And then we also. After discovery will discovery help us to surface the goals, so you might have goals and you have the discovery, have really hard to heart with yourself, hard to heart with your spouse with other members of your family, and then you, and then that is the moment where they feel like, oh, some of the things I thought I wanted is not really what I wanted, and now I really know what I wanted. So then we have goals and now we, with our goals, we can start to work on how to get there. We know where we are. We know where we want to go, and then it’s the meetings to get us there. And afterwards, we’ll break it down into, risk management meetings on insurance and the state planning. We’ll break it to invest meaning. So just like 1 meeting covering each topic. So we’re instead of delivering a giant plan, like you said, that the whole big stack of document, we walk through every step with them and give them a couple of to do’s by the end of each. Meeting, so everything gets done. I’m really big about getting things done. We’ll have a smaller amount of to do’s, but we’ll get things done. And, that’s generally what the 1st, 6 months is like. Yeah, so it can go anywhere from. 6 to 10 meetings or even sometimes more than that, but yeah, but that’s generally how it goes, but I made with them a lot more frequently because honestly, they’re superstars in organization. A lot of things that I want from them, they might have already. So I’m really there to plug in the holes of where, things are not organized. They already come in with a spreadsheet of budget let’s go, yeah, so I meet with them a little bit more frequently every other week in the onboarding process. But yeah, but generally, it could be if they’re really on top of things. We might even be able to get this done in 3 months, but, but also everybody’s life is different. I also have a very busy clients. It’s really hard to get both to come to the meeting at the same time. This might be six to 12 months. So it’s really depending on what their family situation is like.

Stoy Hall, CFP®:
18:51

Yeah. And a couple of things you said there, one, we’re taught you were talking about months, like six to 12 months of just like on onboarding, if you will. caUse after onboarding, then it’s a lot of implementation and adjustments, right? That’s what I wanted to attest back to. Like it’s time, like it’s time takes time to one, just to do all of those. To grow in the relationship between you and your client too, like you said that you want them to come to you when big things happen. That’s what we want. We want to hear those things. We want to know what’s going on because we can help. And ultimately what we can see is different than what you can see. And we talk about this a lot with clients, you’re living in it, right? And we’re seeing over it, which means if something happens, you might not be seeing everything clearly, or you might not have the experience to see something that is coming or can make an adjustment that we can. So there really, truly is no dumb question.

Lei Deng, CFA, CFP®:
19:49

Know them. Oh, absolutely. We’re

Stoy Hall, CFP®:
19:51

the ones that have all the experience and the skills because this is our job. This is what we do to you is all of this. When you leave something out, it makes our job a little harder. But I also want everyone to know that, reach out to us, talk to us. Don’t be afraid of that. We use Slack a lot so that way they can just Slack us whenever. And I love it because you can always have a little fun conversations and they might need one little thing answered like how many dependents do I put on my W4? Something very, we can just shoot off. That doesn’t need a meeting. It doesn’t need something long out call. It’s just something very simple, but what it does is it builds you closer and connects you closer to clients and ultimately. All we are trying to be for you is like a quarterback who’s a bouncer who’s here to protect you, but also like your family friends who you can BS with that’s what our actual role is. It’s not necessarily just numbers. Numbers are numbers. One plus one. Their numbers are numbers. But all of the emotional side and life things and adulting that come into play, that’s what we’re here to really help through. Again, we’re not therapists. But we are as close to a therapist as you can get. And when you need one, then we just we can, allude you to there. But it’s very important for everyone to know that come to us, talk to us. There is, there’s no dumb questions or conversations

Lei Deng, CFA, CFP®:
21:09

where, yeah, we’re a sounding board too. Sometimes sometimes you probably just need like a pair of listening ears. You sometimes I don’t know if you feel this way, but I feel like the clients already know, but they need assurance. They need. They subconsciously, or, or already know what the solution or the direction should be. They just need confirmation. They just need reassurance that this is okay. I’m burned out. I can’t not work anymore. They just need assurance. I have responsibilities. I have family. I got to put food on the table. Let’s look at your money, like finances is, can we afford to take a cycle? It just, they know they can’t go on. They just need to hear from you. They’re, it’s okay for them to pursue the direction that they want to go. Yeah, which is it’s really nice to be. Trusted, to be able to help someone in that type of situation.

Stoy Hall, CFP®:
22:06

Absolutely. Absolutely. What is one takeaway that you want anyone listening to, to take home with and implement into their lives, regardless if they have a planner

Lei Deng, CFA, CFP®:
22:15

or not? This, I do budget. Do your budget. I, when I first started, like we talk about when I first started, I, There is there it has been, and there should always be evolution in how you do the planning process. That means you’re learning, you’re growing, you’re catching up with the time. At first, I wasn’t as keen because I feel like that is something that is so personal. I don’t want clients to feel defensive or standoffish on the stuff that they’re spending. But honestly, that is such a key component that dictates a lot of different things. For example, Under budgeting, understanding your spending, having a tool that tracks your spending. It is almost always a very a light bulb moment. For the clients. Almost always to the direction of, Oh, I didn’t know I spend this much money in, in this Uber Eats Postmates entertainment, you name it. They just, the awareness is really what the most important thing. And I found that you really can talk about a lot of different topics without having a good idea about their life. How can you. How do we forecast to think, like, how much money you need for retirement plan and back up how much money you to save if we don’t know your spending habits now, if we don’t have a clear and honest. Answer on that, how do we know how much insurance we should have to cover your expenses? If we don’t know any of these. How much, it just, it really goes into everything. How do we know emergency fund? How much emergency fund we should save? If we don’t know your expenses, so it really is the part that goes into. A majority of the aspect of the financial planning, so I went from not really loving it to now loving loving, spending numbers and budgeting and I know this is not everyone. I know people that do it and the people that don’t do it. It’s just really a style preference to, but for me, I really find value in knowing It’s just a little personal story about myself that so my husband and I both started this journey of entrepreneurship within 2 years of each other. It was really hard on us financially for a while as anyone out there started that has started the small business, probably. Know this so that really was the time I started getting really deep down into the budget into spending into tracking these numbers. And then I. Really understood where we’re spending money and when the money is tight, it’s really. Awesome to know okay, we’re saving money here. This is absolutely what we cannot cut. It’s not like you can’t spend money. We, our kids are in public school now, but at the time they were in really. Expensive preschool, but we love the philosophy. We love how they take care of them. We’d love the little like kids they have become under their guidance. It was, we talked about it. Like when at one point we’re like having, I think, 200 in our bank account. We’re like, we will sell the house before we take them out of preschool. So so don’t feel don’t judge yourself. This is what I’m saying. When you’re going through your budgeting, don’t judge. Don’t fear that other people will judge you and don’t judge yourself. You love what you love. The things are important to you. Other things are important to you. If you spend more than that on that’s fine. But it’s still doesn’t mean that you can’t have clarity into your financial life. Yeah, so this is why I’m really passionate about. Yeah. Tracking your spending, knowing where the money is going. Yeah, so I think that’s if anyone’s listening, take out, go to 1 of the apps. If you use YNAB, use Mint use Monarch Money, a lot of different apps out there that can help you do this. Just. Get it done. See if and see if there’s surprises if and where are the surprises and just really have that clarity. I think that’s a really great first step forward for the majority of people.

Stoy Hall, CFP®:
26:23

You heard it here first from Leigh. Do your budget. Do it now because the first of the year is coming soon. Get on track for the first of the year. Understand where your money comes in and where it’s going out. We appreciate you and have happy holidays.

Lei Deng, CFA, CFP®:
26:36

Happy holidays. The

Black Mammoth:
26:52

proceeding program was sponsored by Black Mammoth. Any awards, rankings, or recognition by unaffiliated third parties or publications are in no way indicative of the advisor’s, future performance, or any individual client’s investment success. No award, ranking, or recognition should be construed as a current or past endorsement of Black Mammoth. Information regarding specific awards, rankings, or recognitions is available on the Black Mammoth website, www. blackmammoth. com. All investment strategies have the potential for profit or loss. Investment strategies such as asset allocation, diversification, or rebalancing do not assure or guarantee better performance and cannot eliminate the risk of investment losses. There are no guarantees that a portfolio employing these or any other strategy will outperform a portfolio that does not engage in such strategies. This broadcast should not be construed by any client or prospective client as a solicitation to affect or attempt to affect transactions and securities or the rendering of personalized investment advice due to various factors including changing market conditions. The information discussed in this broadcast may no longer be reflective of current positions or recommendations. While information presented is believed to be factual and up to date, Black Mammoth do not guarantee its accuracy, and it should not be regarded as a complete analysis of the subjects discussed. The tax and estate planning information discussed is general in nature, and is provided for informational purposes only, and should not be construed as legal or tax advice. Listeners should consult an attorney or tax professional regarding their specific legal or tax situation. Past performance is not indicative of future results.