Who’s On Your Dream Team? Book Launch

Welcome everyone to our webinar today. It is book launch day for Irvin Schorsch’s book, Who’s on Your Dream Team. I’m not sure if you can see that. It doesn’t work that well with my background, does it?

We got to pop it in there.

Got to pop it in a little bit? Okay.

There you go, [inaudible 00:00:23] great.

That works better. So welcome everybody. Thank you for joining us. We’re going to talk about some of the concepts that are covered in the book today, and we’re joined by Irvin, the author of the book, and some of our other PCM team members. I’ll start it off, one of the really main concepts in the book is talking about a fiduciary. Can one of you explain to me what it means to be a fiduciary?

Be happy to, I’ll start it off. Being a fiduciary means that as the firm or as an individual fiduciary, that you agree, in writing, to put the client’s best interest ahead of the firm, in all situations from when you start throughout the entire relationship. That’s really different. And that is a central part of what I wrote in the book, and it’s missing in this industry because close to 94% of the advisors out there are not fiduciaries. So you got to look hard to make sure you find one of the real ones.

And what do you mean by that? Can one of you give an example of how could a firm not put the client’s interest first? What would that look like?

Yeah, I’ll take that. So where it comes up more often, or more frequently leased, is with commission-based products essentially because that person is more so a rep for either an insurance company, usually it’s insurance, it’s annuities as well, or particular mutual funds will give bigger kickbacks to advisors for using their products versus another. So that’s typically where those conflicts of interest can arise versus being with an independent fiduciary then. There’s no really even incentives in place for an advisor who is a fiduciary to go that route and say, “Okay, I can make extra profit going this way even though it might not fit the best for X, Y, and Z client here.”

I think a lot of it has to do with how is the individual getting paid? Are you getting paid by the client or are you getting compensation, as Chris mentioned, through commission products, through a selling mutual fund, through the particular wirehouse that you might get a percentage of? So there, as Chris mentioned, the conflict of interest, how does a client pay for the services?

Steve, it’s interesting you would say that because I find that some of our clients have no idea what the fiduciary role is, but also they have no way at all of figuring out whether the conflicts exists. Is it at the product creator level? Is it at the broker level because they’re getting commissions or rep fees? They just know that their broker tells them, or their advisor tells them, that they’re doing well. And our view with this book is that’s not good enough. We need transparency and the book is filled with the right questions to ask to figure out whether your advisor is in fact a fiduciary or a charlatan.

Yeah, I think one red flag we see sometimes, or even just talking to friends of friends or family, it’s like, “Oh, we do know what your advisor charges,” and they go, “Oh, I don’t think they charge me anything,” and say, “Okay, well, they’re getting paid somehow, they’re not doing it for free.” So it’s usually a common thing we’ll hear and then have to address, “Okay, well here is how they’re getting paid.”

Oh, that’s interesting, Chris. Somebody just said that to me. I asked somebody the other day, “How much are they charging you?” And she said, “Oh, I don’t think I’m getting charged anything,” and I’m like, “What the heck does that mean?” So that’s a good point. That means that they’re paying some other way by what they’re being invested in.

Right.

There is no free lunch.

Yes.

And a lot of times when we’re reviewing people’s statements of outside that want to get a second opinion from us and as a fiduciary, we’re going to give them the honest opinion, and sometimes you can see if it’s a different class of mutual fund, well, that’s how we know they’re getting paid. The fund companies are paying the advisors that way and that is not how we work.

We only only get paid by the client.

And I think also being a fiduciary requires taking a very holistic approach to the client, not just dealing with the investment aspects, but the planning, understanding life goals. So to be a fiduciary and put the client’s interest first, you need to really have a total understanding of the client, the client’s family, their goals, and just a more comprehensive approach to the client relationship.

Yeah, absolutely. And I think that’s actually one of the chapters in the book is perfect partnership. So that’s a great segue, Steve, and talking about what makes a perfect partnership between a fiduciary firm and a client, and I think what you just said speaks to that. We know our clients, we know their goals, we know their struggles. They’re not just assets on a piece of paper.

Yeah, it’s knowing their whole team. So Who’s On Your Dream Team? It’s not typically just an advisor. There’s accounts involved, state attorneys, insurance brokers, that whole group of the dream team is working with all of those people and not being siloed in your one duty and not really interacting with the rest is an important piece of it.

Sure is, very important piece. I think also when we get an initial individual who says, “Tell me about what you do,” this is how you want to approach your fiduciary firm or at least figure out if you have one. If they’re only selling you products and calling you once in a while and saying, “Everything’s really okay, you have nothing to worry about,” you got to wonder. You need to figure out, well, what exactly are their capabilities? And with a fiduciary firm who’s truly looking out for your best interest, it should be as life changes, not some static portfolio that they put you in that’s a model, and they go, well, periodically we’re going to change the model, and that’s all you get. Our view is there are a lot of other aspects. And Steve, maybe you want to comment on that, or Andrew, what are some of the other things that a fiduciary firm should be providing?

Well, I think helping, you mentioned changes, dealing with life changes, preparing clients before, during and after life changes, and life changes can be retirement, loss of a spouse, preparing the family for college education for the children, inheritance. Any of these life events that make a difference in their lives, preparation needs to be set forth, and I think that that is what we really work on with our clients is dealing with their lives, working with them during life changes.

And to touch on that, I always like to use the baseball analogy, we want to cover all of your bases. Investments is just first base. You want to make sure you’re covering insurance, income taxes, estate planning, all those important financial planning aspects and facets that are important to the whole thing so it’s a cohesive picture for your financial plan.

Well stated.

Yeah, absolutely. And I know one of the things that we really rely on here and that we’ve worked hard to cultivate over the years is a professional network of other professionals that we can refer our clients to. Irvin, do you want to talk a little bit about our professional network?

I do. I think it’s essential and often overlooked, and when I explain to people I meet along the way about our firm, it’s one of the central concepts that I bring up because I don’t know of other fiduciary firms that have an extensive and vetted professional network, meaning each of the providers that we bring in is on a non-pay to play basis. We don’t pay them anything, they don’t pay us anything. They got in because they do a great job at what they do, whether it’s an actuary, whether it’s a CPA, whether it’s an attorney, whether it’s an architect. Whatever the client needs, we want to make sure we have top quality expertise and each of these providers knows if they don’t provide the highest level of service like we do, they’re out.

There’s no vested interest in us using one versus another. But to this date, we have over 56 different firms that we share with clients on an as-needed basis the way Steve described earlier, and we’ve gotten some very strong accolades. Literally yesterday, one of our long-term clients said to me, “I really like that bill paying service,” where they can analyze what we’re spending every month and pay all the bills and send us a report regularly of what that looks like, “And it’s taken such stress off of our life, and since my wife did a face plant and injured her eye, we now want to give that firm a lot more to do because it’ll help us with coping with what life changes came across our plate.” This was yesterday

And Irvin, another big life change for many, many people is the move, whether it be downsizing or moving to a continuing care retirement community, is the decluttering process, which is a huge stress for anybody going through that. And I know that you’ve recommended several people that would come in, help with the decluttering process, get rid of things, put things to auction, and do an actual sweet cleanup of their home. And that’s a pretty simple little thing, but it’s an important thing, and it’s something that creates anxiety and anxiousness in many clients as they go through that, because many cases, they’ve been there 20, 30 years in their current home and they’ve accumulated so much stuff and they have no idea what to do with it.

Yeah. It’s like where do we start?

Yeah, it’s a great example of a service that we can connect our clients to and that you might not think that, “I should ask my financial advisor if they could help me declutter my house,” nobody’s going to think of that.

Leslie, actually, I want to take that a step further. I find that clients in some cases think, “Well, it’s just a matter of finding the right continuing care retirement community.” It isn’t. Very often the mom or dad or mother-in-law or father-in-law is stuck, there might be some health issues, or there are health issues that are pending, and we have the ability to go on and figure out, with the help of those outside providers, after the kids get their chance to pick out the furniture or the belongings or special things that they like, then we’ll send in the proper group to figure out internet auction or in-person auction, and who’s going to handle the remainder items that aren’t saleable to get them to the thrift shop? Who’s going to come in and broom sweep the house? Who’s going to get the moving company to coordinate so it fits with mom or dad’s schedule? And that’s something we coordinate. Not what you typically expect out of your wealth advisory firm, but as fiduciaries that’s a part of our role.

I think that speaks to being independent as well because there’s a lot of cases where you’ll see advisors are somewhat, can be captive advisors, so if they work for, not picking any specific names, but like a Fidelity Vanguard, wherever, they might have a certain set of, “This is what we can do and only what we can do.” So it might not even be against that individual, but they have strict guardrails on what services they can even offer. But being independent of that, I say the mothership in a lot of meetings, it’s like, “Okay, there’s no mothership here, we’re the mothership, of making the decisions for you.” It’s not some from the CIO of X, Y, and Z thinks that rates are going to drop, so we’re going to do A, B and C, or in this example, oh, we don’t touch anything with that because we can’t, or we don’t know, and we’re not supposed to, so you’re going to have to call somebody else, but we’ll get the money there for you. So it’s really that next level of service, advantage of being independent fiduciary.

Absolutely. To touch on that of an example that I can think of a client who that joined us, and won’t name the previous firm, but they were turned off the fact that they got a call that said, “You should get out of everything.” I don’t know if you guys remember who that client was. And they didn’t like the fact that they weren’t listening to what the client had to contribute to that fact. They were coming from a mothership, as it were, and said, “This model says, boom, you got to be out.” And I think one of our value adds is that we are a smaller family type boutique, as it were, of a fiduciary firm that is going to listen to what they have to say and methodically work through their fears, risks and anxieties to come to a conclusion. And I think that’s one of our biggest positive things as a fiduciary firm that we offer.

I think also is the mere fact that we don’t have one individual assigned to a client, the client really gets the whole firm, and many cases, most of the time you’ll have a similar person in the meeting, but there might be other people brought in at several times. But I would say over a year, a client will probably interact with just about everybody in the firm, and everybody in the firm does know that individual, does know that client, and so you really do get the whole firm and not the expertise of just one individual.

Yeah, it’s so true.

I’d add to that… Go ahead, Leslie.

I was just going to say, I was on a client call recently where we were talking about mortgages, and Andrew has big wealth of knowledge about mortgages. So Andrew wasn’t on the call, but Chris pinged him and say, “Hey, Andrew, can you hop on this call for a minute?” Andrew jumps in the call, says, “Hey, Client A, Client B, how are you? Great to see you. Yeah, let’s talk about mortgages for 10 minutes.” They talk about mortgages, Andrew hops off, and we carry on with other topics. So we’re nimble like that in that we’ve got a lot of knowledge and we can hop on calls at any time.

Well said.

Thanks.

Very well said.

Sorry if I interrupted you.

That’s all right. What I was going to add was, for you listeners today, think about the type of relationship you have with whoever your financial advisor is, and I think it will come clear that what you deserve is a partnership. We view our clients as an extension of the PCM family. That’s us, all of our team members, and we treat them like they’re an extended part of the family. And if that’s what you’re getting, then you’re in the right place. That’s not what you’re getting, then certainly you want to seek further, and by all means, what you’ll see in Who’s On Your Dream Team are all the right questions to ask to figure out whether the advisor you’re using is in fact legit, is in fact putting your interest first. By the time you read the short book, which should take you about an hour and a half, or you can listen to it on Audible, or you can read it as an e-book, your choice, but you’ll learn a whole lot quickly on how to discern whether you’ve got the right type of representation partnering with your family.

Absolutely. Anybody, I know Chris and Andrew, you’re both acknowledged in the book as having helped out providing some data. Are there parts of the book that really stand out for you, that strike a chord with you?

Really more towards I’d say what’s great is the stories. We change the names to make things anonymous, but in particular chapters 10 and 11, we go through some of the interactions that Irvin’s had with clients over the years and describe some of the solutions that a fiduciary advisor can bring to the table.

Yeah. I’d say the same thing. That usually is what resonates the most, because then people read those and say, “Hey, I can see myself in that situation, or I’m going through something very similar.” I think that’s what we tend to tell people to look at first because then they get a sense of, “Oh, wow. They helped someone do X, Y and Z,” kind of like we talked about earlier during this year is I never thought, “My advisor doesn’t do that for me, or I didn’t know they could do that,” kind of exposing those different things that are out there.

And it pretty much runs the gamut from everything to receiving an inheritance, having children that have run into some struggles, we’ll call it, whether that’d be financial or personal. I’m thinking about moving, or when to file for social security, or collect Medicare, or even to the one where I’m simply afraid to retire, what to do?

Yeah. I think that with what we do planning wise, that can give a client comfort and clarity going forward, that’s very important, Andrew, because there’s always the fear of running out of money and burdening children. These are the things that we hear all the time. So what we do try to do is put together a plan that creates a level of comfort for the client, that they’re going to be okay.

I would add to that, we get lots of special situations, and what we encourage our clients to do is to reframe what they need, not focus on what we do. Some examples of that would be a special needs child, which we counsel our clients on how to deal with the special needs of that child, in some cases, multiple kids. And it’s difficult for them, and for us we can step back and be less emotional, I won’t say unemotional because obviously there are significant challenges for our clients. But being in a position where you have a mother-in-law that’s facing her demise, or child where it’s going to be going on for a lot of years, and we need to be able to hold up a mirror and show them how to cope, that’s one of the key marks of a great fiduciary firm, the way that they reach out to help their clients.

Absolutely.

Well said.

Yeah. Irvin, I know I’m going to possibly put you on the spot here, but I know this is your second book. What is it that inspired you to write this one? Because I know there was a fire in you to write it, and can you-

Absolutely.

… [inaudible 00:22:22] a bit about what that fire was about?

Sure. I’ll give you some perspective. My first book, Reinvent Rich: How to Make More Money, More Moments and More Meaning in Life, was 2018, and I took 23 different slices of life, meaning time periods. You’re talking about as a teenager, you were young, married, are you looking for your second house? Are you dealing with what happens pre-retirement or in retirement? And try to give a very short insight, 12 pages, 15 pages, into how to deal best with that stage of life, so it was more about how to book.

The fire in my belly on Who’s On Your Dream Team was more, now that we covered that in 2018, here in 2024, with the proliferation of different kinds of advisors seeming to look a lot alike, I wanted to give our readers and our listeners the opportunity to see, what are those right questions? How can they make sure for themselves that they’re in the right place? And if they have a great fiduciary advisor, wonderful. If they don’t, then at least they’ve got the tools and they can figure it out rather quickly. And as they look in the whites of the eyes of the people that they’re asking these questions of, they’ll know whether that advisor has conflicts or not, especially if they’ve been with them long time.

And I think this is more a matter of integrity and looking for straightforwardness from whoever their existing advisor is, or if they’re a do-it-yourselfer and they say, “You know what? I’m not doing a very good job of managing my money. I get lucky in this year and I’m off in that year, and I can’t seem to develop that right increase in my net worth over time,” now they know how to figure out who suits. So yes, I very much had a fire in my belly to write this book, and I’m excited that you can get a hardback, a softback, an Audible, or an e-book, all through Amazon. Starting tonight.

Yeah, it is live. It’s live on Amazon right now. Congratulations, Irvin.

Thank you.

Getting that book out there to the world. Any other final thoughts, anyone, as we wrap up our book launch webinar?

When’s the next one?

I’m working on it now. I’ll keep you posted, but I think it’s some months away.

Well, congratulations. It’s an awesome book. It’s an easy read.

Yeah, [inaudible 00:25:20], her car is full of them, right? You got to travel with, what? 10 of them? Went on the road the other day.

Right.

There might be copies in every library across the country.

I like it. Thank you all.

Thank you.

Yes, thank you everybody.

Bye-bye

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.