Welcome to Make your Money Matter, the show that aims to change the way we think about financial advice. So, you can make better decisions.
Brad Barrett is a managing director and partner at One Capital Management, a wealth management firm serving nearly 1500 clients nationwide. With over $2.5 billion in assets, they’re a group of advisors dedicated to ensuring their clients achieve their investment and retirement goals. And now here's your host Brad Barrett. [00:26.1]
Brad: Welcome to Make your Money Matter, the show dedicated to helping you create a better relationship with your money. I'm your host, Brad Barrett. And it's my goal to help distill the best ideas when it comes to your finances so that you can make more confident money moves. Here at one capital management. Our mission is simple to help our clients and you listeners take control of your finances and build the life you deserve. Friends, today the challenge is no longer the access to information, but rather it's finding the right information. And more importantly, how that applies to you. And that's my commitment to you here each and every week on the Make your Money Matter podcast because after all your money matters and knowing how to plan your financial future is vital to your financial success. And before we get started on today's episode, you want to find out more about our firm and our advisors here at One Capital Management, you can go to our website at onecapitalmanagement.com or you can give us a call (805) 410-5454. You can actually text us as well. You can text the word track T R A C K to that same number (805) 410-5454 and we'll reach out to you to set some time to go through your retirement track review meeting, to understand if you're on track for the goals and objectives, you have that happy and healthy retirement. [01:44.5]
And on today's episode of make your money matter. And each month we're going to be doing this and what I call our One Capital Management client experience and what to expect. And with that said, I want to invite on my partner and president of One Capital Management, Pat Bowen. And Pat has been integral in what our clients here at One Capital Management, know is their client experience. And I couldn't think of a better person have on each month when talking about the One Capital Management client experience and what to expect, what clients should be expecting from their private wealth manager. So pat, welcome to the show. [02:25.7]
Pat: Thank you, Brad. It's good to be here.
Brad: It's good to have you. We lead into the show today, we're going to be talking about our experience, our client experience. And I thought the first episode here around the One Capital client experience, having you on being at the helm of that division, that goal we set out years ago and our client experience starts with our services department, our advisors, our client servicing team. And so, I wanted to start off the podcast today with what was your vision when it came to designing our client services, associate team, the advisors, how we communicate with our clients, what was the vision you had with our servicing for our clients? [03:07.6]
Pat: Well, it started with the experience and, and forgive me, but I'll share a couple of, of stories or anecdotes that kind of, I think planted the seed in me of what I thought was the right thing for anybody's client in any industry, what should that interaction be like? What should that experience be like? That you go to a fast-food restaurant to order some food, you're at a hotel. You go to a grocery store. What should the interaction between you, the client and, or in some businesses they'll call them customers. I think our clients are that. And what I mean by client versus customers, a client is a lifelong relationship where you're really integrated more intimately. And a customer interaction is generally a one-off. [04:04.8]
Brad: More transactional
Pat: Transactional. Perfect! And so it was that. And I go back to, I remember being a kid and twice a year is all we got to do when I was a kid. And there was a restaurant I don't even think they exist anymore. There used to, I was in Northern California growing up. The velvet turtle.
Brad: Great name.
Pat: And it was the only dining restaurant we had in Marin. And I'll never forget where it sat. It sat at the top of this hill. We would literally, as kids put on our little suits and in our clip-on ties and we went to a formal dinner. And it was twice a year, my brother's birthday and my birthday. And we got to order what we wanted, but we had to sit properly. We had that act properly in a fine dining restaurant. But the way the staff treated us was what left the impression on me, where they did every little thing in between servings set up a new piece of silverware, bring extra bread. As a kid, if you've got a Roy Rogers or a Shirley temple and put an extra cherry in there for you, and they would let you know that I did this to take care of you. That just left this impression on me of the experience. I didn't know it at the time, I wasn't defining it. But I do know this. I left that restaurant thinking I can't wait for six more months until we get to our seven months till my brother's birthday and we're going back. And so that left a significant impression in what I think back on those things and say, what experience do you want to create for your clients? And remember a client being someone you're going to have you hope a lifelong relationship with. Our job is to, to get ourselves steeped into what are their issues. What is it that impacts them emotionally and spiritually when wealth is in the conversation? What are they trying to achieve with their wealth? What are they hope to do with the money they've, they've earned and saved and grown over time? [06:09.7]
It's family, if it's charity, if it's their particular beliefs, it's it's church or synagogue or whatever it might be that's important to them and that they want to use their wealth to create something else with it, have an impact. And it is a very difficult thing for people to do. First of all, it's actually very hard for them to define that. You know, this in your experience, I've had it in my experience. I know all of our advisors do. And clients, I think when we have those conversations with them, the first time we engage in this thing, we call discovery, getting to know each other, and we ask them those questions. I've seen them sort of taken aback. Interesting. I've never thought about that. And when they did then start to articulate it and the art, if you will, or part of the art of our businesses, to help them continue to talk about those things. Help them to dig deeper into their why, what is their purpose? What's important to them? What are their values? And passing those values on and, or using their wealth to help build on those things. In some people it's a legacy, others, it's not, it's just their children, it's their grandchildren. And so, we have to figure those out. Then if they've engaged us, how do we maintain that level of experience? And that gets to people. And when you said, well, what's that vision. We started this thing out and it was 20 well, it'll be 20 years as you know, July 19th, I believe is the exact date this summer. That'll be our 20-year anniversary. So somewhere around between 20 years ago and 16 years ago, it started to develop here at this firm. By bringing all of the people we had together, which of course is, you know, it started with four at the five. I think you might've been six. [08:09.8]
Brad: Yup.
Pat: And we didn't even have a client services team, if you recall.
Brad: Right.
Pat: We were the ones who advised and did all of the servicing. So, we know what that experience is. When you think back to when you got that phone call for, Hey, Brad, I need some help with this. And, and some of it might've been sort of just a task oriented. I need you to send $10,000. I needed a deposit here. I'm going to send money in, can you get me wire instructions? He didn't have an associate to do that part of the job for you. You did it yourself. And you made sure everyone, every I was dotted, every T was crossed the form looked wonderful. The way you crafted an email, or even in some cases faxing back then. How that went and ultimately went to the client, was clean, crisp, easy to understand. They could literally print, attach a quick note to their banker and hand it to them and it was done with no flaws. That created an incredible client experience for something that is somewhat elementary. It's not a major major event, but those touch points were so critical. And I always wanted to make sure that if we could, we never made mistakes. That the experience, as we say around here was simple. We just talked about it and elegant. Now sending a wire and asking us to send a check, but some might wonder what the heck is so elegant about that?
Brad: Right.
Pat: Well, if you make it so simple and smooth, it becomes an elegant event.
Brad: Yeah.
Pat: And when a client can walk away and say, boy, that was easy. [09:44.9]
Brad: That's the experience we're going for. Because, and to your point, the moment our clients walk into our office, whether it's a prospective client seeking us out, out of a referral from another client, they want to know that they're taken care of because they're coming in to talk to us about something that's private, something that's emotional to your point, which is a good one. And that's the psychology of money and the reason why I think we all with the radio program, with the podcast, talking about, make your money matter, the actual name of the program, right, is that money matters to a lot of people and to your point in a different ways.
Pat: Hmm…hmm.
Brad: And so that experience, and I want to touch on something because it came up as you were talking about the experience. And I want to talk about that first meeting, that very first meeting, when we, we go through that concierge, if you will, that, that experience you had in your example of, of the restaurant, when you were a kid, right? The first conversation that we have with our clients that we call our discovery and it essentially goes in three stages, discovery, design deliver. And then after the delivery process is the overall maintaining of the relationship, the client experience, making sure that we maintain that high level of service that we do for all of our clients. Walk me through the discovery process, how that was designed, why ours is different than others? You mentioned a couple of things just to lead into that, like our mind map that we used to use and still use to some extent, round values, goals, objectives, and helping our clients define that. And we do that a lot in our discovery process. So, walk me through how you've helped us build that for our clients, for all of us advisors here at the firm, helped us build that with our questions or answering how we're asking them, walk us through that. [11:23.5]
Pat: Yeah, well that discovery process was a collaboration of individual experiences over the years, mine or the other partners, Don Dan, Steve, yourself, others that have come along, others that we know in the industry. I came up through a great program and an amazing advisory training program. And then through some other consultants in the industry that we've worked with and we put these things in what we felt like was a nice flow and very open-ended questions to allow us to ask a question and then listen. In 90% of that, we better be listening. And then the follow-up questions, because somebody might tell you something about, well, you know, what keeps you up at night? Well, a fear of losing money. I think, I think in general, most people have some sense of fear of losing money. Some are very comfortable with that risk. Others are not at all. And our job is then to try to get more precise about the understanding of their concern and how they define losing money and where they're going to eventually hit their threshold of let's call it tolerance for that pain. And then we have to come back and now we have to marry that with the technical skill, the acumen we have in doing our job. You can call it the engineering side of the work that's behind the scenes that how do we marry that to make sure we don't push that client to that threshold. And that's, what's so important. And, and it's, it's about listening. I can tell you that, you know, I think our, our process and the questions we have have laid out for our advisors to, to ask every single client in that discovery meeting, what's important to you about money? What do you want to achieve with your wealth? And then starting the conversation there. And then it goes into values in relationships who are the people in your life that are most important, what are the things you'd want to achieve with your wealth? What keeps you up at night? What makes you concerned? [13:38.4]
Those types of things, and then we eventually dig into well, okay, well now we've got to look at the financials, incomes and spending and taxes and assets and those things, how they're structured, how legally they're structured, how should they be structured. And we can take all that information in, and then we bring it back to our team. And one of the most critical pieces to all of this at the very beginning of that discovery, finding advisors who can ask the questions, who are comfortable in that conversation, who really practice empathy and listen. And I think that's going to be one of the biggest differences between who we have that are sitting in front of clients and working with our families, our client families, and perhaps others, is that unique characteristic that makes them different as people. [14:29.5]
Brad: And let's talk about that for a second, because I agree with you. I mean, I'm in that pool of advisors. I came here years ago that that 6% I remember there were six or seven at the time, no associates, but we had that advisor core that we all were all going and rowing the same boat. We were going on the same philosophical. This is client first experience, the rate of returns and investment discussions that we'll talk about on this podcast as well, comes from all of those conversations in that discovery. Most clients are almost taken back by that. Why is it, why is he not asking you about my risk tolerance or, or what I would do if a market went down 10%, like most, little 10 questionnaires that most of these advisors put out there, because the more we know about it, the behavioral finance traits of our clients, the more we're able to serve them. So those of you listening right now, as you're hearing that, I mean, that's, those are important dialogues to have with your advisors. And that's, to me, a lot of the stent between private wealth advisory and I'll call it retail financial advisory. And I want to talk about that growth for a second, because 10+ years ago being six or seven of us, and when I came over, we had about 570 million give or take in asset management. Today, we're knocking on the door of 3 billion. You mentioned the advisory core that you've grown. You've been at the helm of that. We've just picked up some great advisors over the past year in particular and what has been the attributes? Continue that for a little bit. What have been the attributes that we were looking for in advisors to help serve clients here at One Capital Management. [15:54.5]
Pat: It always starts with a shared value system. They have theirs that they’ve come Intel with. Where they picked it up, where they learned it, whether it's from their parents, grandparents, whether it was from training and industry, combination, some it's just built into their DNA and they're hardwired that way. We have to connect and see that we have a shared value system to start with. That's more important than, well, what sort of business do they have right now.
Brad: Right.
Pat: Are we on that same page? That is table stakes. If we don't have that, we have no basis to go forward and that's okay. We are not a place that wants to have an infinite number or a huge number of advisors. We have no desire to necessarily be the biggest firm out there at all. We want to create the absolute best experience from discovery through delivery, through follow-up and all of that stuff continues on, it's a cycle. And it will never end as long as these folks are clients and then ultimately, perhaps the next generation in their family and we continue to manage money to help carry on those original values and goals and objectives that they shared with us. So, it starts with then, that values based. Then we see if we have that connection. And one of the things I always think about is, and I think I'm getting better at this is starting to understand when someone has empathy. And, you know, because you can see how much they listen. [17:31.9]
Brad: Yeah.
Pat: And, and it doesn't just end with the advisors, and we talk about that client experience. Then our task went from six or seven of us who were doing all of the advising and all of the operations and all of the client servicing. And creating the experience ourself to now bring in other folks, the associates on our team, the client services team who have to now carry that torch for us. We had to entrust them that they would deliver the same experience that we did. And that was probably, I could say the biggest challenge we ever had. I certainly know it was for me because it's tough to hand off something so precious.
Brad: Yeah.
Pat: If you will, at least it feels that way to me. So, we've been, we've gotten better over the years. We've had some amazing ones that some are still with us. Some of them actually graduated up if you will.
Brad: Hmm.
Pat: Or matriculated up to higher in different roles here at the firm, others have gone on to success in other, other places, other firms, and even some in other industries, but we still have good connections with them and it's nice to see their success. But we've got an outstanding team today and I can say that it's past my expectations. And I think one of the most important things we are working on is through training and giving them the foundation and giving them the guidance, but allowing them to be able to create those service experiences and be able to make, have the autonomy, to make a decision at the moment of an interaction with a client.
Brad: Hmm…hmm.
Pat: In order to create that outstanding experience, that simple and elegant experience where the client walks away and says, it doesn't matter if it was, if it was Brad, if it's Pat, if it's somebody else's an advisor, or if it's one of the associates. That they finished, that conversation or that email string, and they say, man, they do a good job. [19:33.5]
Brad: Yeah.
Pat: That to me is the ultimate. And I know it, I hear it. I see it. And I see clients who will proactively email me and say, your team is outstanding and this is what they just did for us. Thank you very much.
Brad: Isn't it cool, the evolution of the firm being that, where we get an email like that, it's, it's so much more rewarding to hear that about your team than it is about you. I mean, one of the most rewarding things we can get as advisors as a referral is a, we love what you're doing, want to do to talk to our family member, our neighbor, our friend, but it's almost as rewarding if not more to say, Hey like, my associate Jeremy, he knocked it out of the park for me, just wanted to let you know. It's amazing to hear that because that used to be my role along with the advisory role, same with you. And now with Shelley, and now with Ryan on the team, we've got such a bench. Now to your point that we've grown in our client services, we now have directors of operations, project managers. I mean, that's the beauty of growth. It's, it's, you know, there's growing pains in any business as you, we, you know, have gone through as we all know, but it's really great to actually have this forum in particular, to be able to talk about. And we want our clients to hear about is we are doing this all and always will in the light of the client. They can put in the client in that seat, what would the client want? As we grow, what would the making, maintaining that relationship for the client? What is their goal? I think we've always done that. It was one of the best things I've seen as a firm. You know, as an advisor here is we are always client centric and that's not lip service. That's actually, we, we back it up. I mean, and we, we tell clients and we tell people like, we don't have that yet, but we're going to look into it. [21:12.1]
Pat: Absolutely. We won't stop. If we ever stop pushing to get better then at that's the moment where in essence, you could say, we rest on our laurels, the thing is the best in the world. You can't stop. You got to keep pushing. This is constantly moving and evolving. We see this with all and in our careers and as a student of history, as well, things come along that are new and shiny in our industry. We're not talking about making hamburgers and cheeseburgers. And they're new and shiny if it was dotcoms, if it was tulips, a hundred and some 50 years ago, or what have you, if it's SPACs, if it's NFTs, if it's, you know, cyber currency and the, the new great, shiny thing. Is this something that is real? Is this something that our clients should risk their wealth or some of it in those things? And I in particular have a very strong feeling. I do believe that one of our roles is to protect people's wealth and help them get where they're going. And part of that job is you're always got to protect. You've got to protect their flanks and you got to help them continue to move forward. We have to constantly push ourselves and evolve. One of those things that we're doing is we're actually adding a bit of, of science to our process of hiring people. We set the parameters of the culture we want. We actually can set the parameters and characteristics and traits of who would be great at, in a role of client services, who would be great as an analyst, a portfolio manager, an advisor. And we can do that by defining what's the experience we want and the outcome we're looking for, for the client. And it's going to be very different from a client services role to a portfolio manager's role. At the end of the day, we've got to deliver two things, a great experience for our clients, and we have to actually produce results. [23:21.5]
Brad: Right.
Pat: We got to help them financially get to where they're going. And that's it at the core of also what we're doing. So, both have to be there, but culture wise and who they are as people, how they're driven, what motivates them are they data-driven, are they more people in social driven? We can now use some science and psychometrics to actually craft a profile of who we're looking for when we hire.
Brad: Yeah, it's actually one of the coolest. I'm glad you brought that up because using that culture to be able to define the roles that we're seeking because in our industry is many people know and if you, if you don't know, right, the data-driven the portfolio analysts think differently than a client service associate who is more relationship driven. And we as a firm in the financial industry and in the specifically the investment management industry, serving clients and their money, we have to have all those characters on our team, but we to make sure we fit them into the right place. This last year, when you had the great idea to bring that kind of culture indexing into the environment was huge. We're now hiring people that are perfect for their role. On paper, or sorry, on paper, they're perfect. And when we see it out as like, this is actually a, the psychometrics we're using work. And so, we're now have teams for our advisors and for our clients that are perfect for that role versus sticking a relationship person into a portfolio analyst role. They may not be the best trader, but they'd be a great servicer. So, we've always evolved. And I guess I want to reiterate your point earlier about growth is always going to be there for us. And this last year, we've seen so much, in so many of those things we've put in there, even to how you're listening to us right now on a podcast, on our radio program. We always want to be thinking cutting edge on that next level to communicate to our clients, because a lot of client experience, and I wanna get your take on this, a lot of client’s variances is also articulating that to the clients, the management of expectations, the communication. We can do all these great things behind the scenes. We want them to feel it and interact with it when they're here, but when they're on vacation or when they're, and they don't want to be thinking about their money, but they do want to hear from us or other things like this, it's great to have mediums like a podcast, like a radio, like seminars and webinars, they can go to that. We're hosting a write-ups that we do all of that we now have, and we're getting better at it. And it's just a great thing, not really a question side there, but it just something that's been hearing us talk about the clinic experience we've always been focusing on and I love being able to continually evolve in that, even to the granular, if you think about it, of hiring the right person for the right role to the outward expression of something like this, like a podcast. [26:07.3]
Pat: Well, this is you, you hit on something that I think is very, very important. That experience one of the elements of that and creating that experience as, as I know, you know, you can think of probably when I say this 5, 10 things right away.
Brad: Hmm…hmm.
Pat: Of what happened in life and experiences that you can say yes. When they did that, to me, it changed the nature of an experience. It made a good experience, a great experience, or it could have made something that was a bad experience into a good experience because they recovered. And I think that the whole component to that is communication.
Brad: Yeah.
Pat: Something goes wrong. You want to have communication. You want proactive communication. And I'm thinking from a client's position. I want to hear from whoever it is I'm working with. If I'm working, if we're talking about my wealth and my finances, or if we're talking about, I took my car to the shop, I want the person to call me and let me know what's wrong. What's right. What's not wrong. Or my doctor or whatever it might be.
Brad: Yeah communicate. [27:08.9]
Pat: Communicate to me. And so, what's happened is, you know, it's not just COVID either that has created this, but I think it's just an evolution. So, the old way to communicate was let's schedule a meeting and we'll get together. Then we also enhance that and used telephones, and we would just drop a call. Pick up the phone, call a client, just to say hello and chat with them. Get an update from them, maybe some things have changed in life. We want to get an update. We, as, you know, if we put that a little more formerly, we call that rediscovery.
Brad: Hmm…hmm.
Pat: But it's a lot of times just to drop in to say hello, and how are you doing? And a lot of times we'll miss him. Maybe it's not a convenient time. You don't know what they're doing right at that moment, at 2:30 on a Tuesday afternoon. Might be picking the kids up from school, they're out on a walk, whatever it might be. Therefore, it was on our time. This medium through podcast, we can communicate and yet they can listen to it on their time.
Brad: Yep.
Pat: They just download it to their device or to a computer and, or you can ultimately play it through your car. If you're on the road, they got a 30-minute drive Bing, now I can hear from my advisor and hear what they're thinking. And okay, that was an opportunity for us to proactively communicate to our clients. [28:35.7]
Brad: And actually, on that, we're actually every month on the, Make Your Money Matter podcast here, something you and I kind of was born out of our discussion and thinking about this podcast was doing advisor spotlight. So, each month having our advisors on, and those of you listening, having the exact advisor you're working with on there to hear more from them on a monthly or semi-monthly basis. To be able to, again, communicate on a more effective and efficient basis at the time that makes sense for our content. Yeah, the evolution of communication has been great, right? Meetings, phone calls, emails, even a text, Hey, Hey, Hey, how you doing? You know, nothing advice related, but just checking in. And now even like scheduling zoom meetings, but all of those are great. What toyour point having this done on their time and that meeting, that's why we're really excited about this, this Make Your Money Matter podcast and getting it out there. And you know, with that, Pat, I want to thank you for your time here on the client experience side. And each month, we're going to do this. [29:31.3]
So, for those of you listening, we're going to have the OCM kind of experience with Pat and I talking about this with pat being at the helm of this thing. I think next time we're going to go into a little bit more of the investment management experience. Most of us don't think it's a first touch, but obviously that's the reason why clients are here for us is to make sure that we're growing their wealth, protecting their wealth relative to what their goals and objectives are that we helped them define in that first interaction. So, we're looking forward to that next month and for those of you listening right now, make sure to keep an eye on that one.
We're going to be posting that every month. And next thing we're going to go through is the investment management component. So Pat, thanks for the time today.
Pat: Thanks for having me here. It’s all been good
Brad: Absolutely. Absolutely. [30:06.9]
The information in this podcast is educational and general in nature and does not take into consideration the listener's personal circumstances. Therefore, it is not intended to be a substitute for specific individualized, financial, legal, or tax advice.
To determine which strategies or investments may be suitable for you consult the appropriate qualified professional prior to making a final decision. [30:30.6]
