Creative Planning has been trusted with more than $700 billion in client assets under management and advisement. A simple truth? That doesn’t happen by accident. Jeff Stolper – the firm’s Director of Financial Planning – joined us to discuss how Creative Planning’s client-centric philosophy has helped the firm reach that scale. One key takeaway: wealth management is a people and relationships business. Before emotional intelligence, investment knowledge, or communication skills, the most important character trait may simply be being a positive, likable person. Be someone clients enjoy being around!
(Stay tuned for additional important disclosure information at the end of this episode.)
Danny Noonan
Creative planning is one of the largest wealth management firms in the country, overseeing more than 700 billion in combined assets under management and advisement. They serve clients across all 50 states and abroad. The firm is well known for its planning-led approach to wealth management, integrating investment management, tax, estate planning, and other financial services under one roof.
I'm Danny Noonan, and this is Simple, but Not Easy, a podcast for financial advisors from Morningstar’s Wealth Group. We always have great guests, and today is no exception. We're fortunate to be joined by Jeff Stolper. Jeff serves as Creative Planning's director of financial planning, leading more than 300 financial planners, providing training, career development, and technical guidance to the firm's financial planners and wealth managers. Jeff is also the co-host of Down the Middle, one of Creative Planning's internal podcast.
Jeff, it's great to have you. Welcome.
Jeff Stolper
I'm excited to be here. Thanks for having me.
Danny Noonan
I skipped over probably one of the most important details about you. You participate on a competitive barbecue team. I can't think of a more important place to start than that. What goes into being part of a competitive barbecue team?
Jeff Stolper
I'm also guessing I am your first guest that has that on their bio, that's for sure. Yes, so being from Kansas City, there's a competitive barbecue circuit, and you see it in other places too, like Texas and up in Iowa, and all over the place, but for me, what it means over the last 10 or so years, I've got a core group of friends, and we get together, and it's essentially a weekend of tailgating, so competitive barbecue, you are, or you are competing against other teams, and you submit four meets each time. I'm not going to get too much into this, because people are not here for this topic, but you submit a brisket, some chicken ribs, and pulled pork each time, and they, they judge you. Our team, I think over the 10 years we've done it, we've maybe gotten one or two ribbons, so we're doing it for fun, not to win too much.
Danny Noonan
I went to college in Missouri, so I'm familiar with how passionate Kansas City is about their barbecue on Open Table. Who scores higher, your kitchen or Jack Stack on the Plaza?
Jeff Stolper
100% Jack Stack, but I would say that my house is more fun, so we're in the fun category.
Danny Noonan
A good friend of mine, he's his dad grew up, born and raised in Kansas City, and we were back in town for a Kansas City Chiefs game, maybe half decade ago, and he took us to LCS, kind of a hole in the wall over by Arrowhead Stadium. I know, does that pass your the Jeff Stolper test?
Jeff Stolper
Oh, it definitely does. So, I actually think LCS is some of the best barbecue in town, and it is an experience, so both for the food and the experiential component. I mean, you never know what you're going to get, and for a long time you would go in there and write their pit is like right in the open area, as I'm sure you remember. Yeah, and the guy, LC, he would go in, and he was just there hanging out, like up until I think he's now passed away, but for the longest time he would just be sitting there hanging out, talking with people, not even doing anything on the restaurant front anymore.
Danny Noonan
All right. Well, for any listeners in Kansas City, make sure you check out LCS.I want to get into creative planning and kind of define who you are as a company, but the one thing I have to ask, is you know, I've been on LinkedIn recently, and I see these city takeovers where Creative Planning is filling an auditorium of just scanning with my eyes. I'm guessing there's probably more than 500 people in attendance for these. What's going on with those?
Jeff Stolper
So, we are having these regional Connect events. So, for a long time, our headquarters is in Kansas City, and we've held a Connect event in Kansas City, where you bring in speakers and you get clients together, and it's a great, great time to, I think, not just showcase what creative planning is about on the wealth management front, but that we are more, more holistic. So many of those speakers are not actually investment centric, it's on quality of life, longevity, or just something that's interesting, and we've started to do that across the country as our footprint has also started to expand. So, now we're, yeah, you're right, we're this past week I was in Milwaukee and Minneapolis, and we had 500 to 1000 people at each of those events, and they're just a ton of fun, incredibly fun.
Danny Noonan
That's great. Yeah, my takeaway would be that your clients must really like you if you can get that many of them to show up and sit in a chair for a couple hours. As an outside observer, you know something that's always impressed me about creative planning is that across the entirety of the firm, whether it's talking about markets, asset allocation, tax planning, the messaging always has a unique ability to distill the concept down to the studs, and I think that starts with the way people talk about the firm itself. Creative planning isn't a money manager, it's a wealth manager. I'd love it if you could riff on that distinction and describe the firm.
Jeff Stolper
For sure. And I would describe us as an implementer, that ultimately is how I view it. And I mean, my role in the firm is financial planning driven, so many of my responses throughout this podcast is going to be from that premise, but I view creative planning as our ultimate goal is getting our clients to a better spot, so whether that's adding some kind of new service, because we do have so many different things that we can do, whether that is tax advice, legal advice, we've got a tax practice, we have a law practice, we have an insurance group, all these different things, the ultimate goal is. To better your client, and of course, we're helping with investment management too. That's great. Yeah, so what does that mean? I mean, it means that we're helping to coordinate everything. It gives the client better peace of mind, it makes it easier for them to implement something, and then also it gives them a deeper understanding of the why behind whatever it is. So, for all our people that we have in the field, which we have such a talented team. You want them to be able to convey a thought in a very simple, easy manner. I'm so glad you brought that up proactively, because that's what we're really going for.
Danny Noonan
I'm paying attention. I breezed over it at the beginning, but I mentioned creative assets under management and advisement are north of 700 billion. Just saying that number out loud, it's a bit intimidating, but when you unpack it, if you could, I don't think it's the case that you're serving only the wealthiest zip codes or large institutional clients. Can you paint a better picture of who the typical creative planning client is?
Jeff Stolper
Absolutely, so we do serve clients across all levels of wealth, and also across all those levels, we are doing financial planning, whether that's somebody that has 200,000 of investable assets or someone that has several 100 million. They're going through a planning process that's going to drive results for them, and it now you're looking to get at different things, and I think we're going to talk about this a little bit later, dependent upon the level of wealth, but we are helping clients across all levels of wealth, and ultimately, you know, the end goal, as I talked about, is to get them to a better place, whether that's for the person that has 200,000 making sure that they know what they need to do on their tax return, or that they have a fundamental understanding of just what it's like to get started investing, or for the person that is a cent a millionaire, there's really complex estate planning stuff we can help with, and tax planning, and some pretty cool stuff on the investment side with private markets and all that. So we've got a wide array of services meant for all sorts.
Danny Noonan
Yeah, I'm excited to dive into the differences in planning for somebody that has lower wealth, maybe earlier in the career, and then later wealth, like you said. But before we do that, I just kind of want to jump into your role at Creative Planning, and I think there's two parts to your role. First, you're the director of financial planning at one of the largest wealth managers in the country. What does the role look like day to day? How do you spend your time each week?
Jeff Stolper
A lot of my week is spent interacting with our wealth managers and financial planners, I, it would be a horrible use of my time if I was just sitting in my office working all day. I want to listen to how things are going and be able to respond appropriately, and then proactively plan to make their lives better, so that they don't have to worry about it, so they can deliver services to our clients, so that includes talking with firms that we've integrated, advisors that we've hired all over the country, making sure I'm included in the conversations that they're having about what do they need to be successful. I'll join some client conversations as well, maybe some kind of complex topic has to be distilled to the client, I'll help with that, and that I help with our firm training and things like that, so lots going on in any given week.
Danny Noonan
The second part of your role is you're the director of financial education. What does that entail? And I hope for your sake and your time or your well-being of there's some overlap between those two jobs.
Jeff Stolper
A lot of overlap, all are incredibly fun, but I do host a podcast with our CEO, Peter Mallouk, called Down the Middle.
At some of the Connect events, I will do some speaking engagements, and then, as I previously mentioned, I lead efforts internally for our wealth managers and financial planners when it comes to training and education and things like that. So, anytime we have new advisors or new planners join, I'm helping educate them on how do we philosophically approach things, and then also ongoing we do some pretty cool stuff on that front too.
Danny Noonan
Let's get into that. The approach to planning on the investment side, many advisors can offer model portfolios across the risk spectrum, and I think for most clients there's usually a portfolio that's going to fit them, but financial planning is much more personal. Everyone has different goals, complexities, and things like that. When you oversee a team serving 1000s of clients, how do you create the consistency in the planning experience? You know, I think McDonald's wants to offer the Big Mac. They want to taste the same in Kansas City as they do Chicago. I realize, as I say that out loud, we're talking about a premium experience, and financial planning is better. A better description might be Mastro's Steakhouse or something. How do you make sure the steak is medium rare across cities and things like that? How do you keep the consistency for clients across the country?
Jeff Stolper
You know, I've been eating at more McDonald's recently, because I have young kids, and I have to say it's, it's still pretty delicious. So, I'm okay with that. I'm okay with that. Well, I think you have to first start with somebody that philosophically believes in planning. If you start there, it's just like if you're hiring someone that is a positive person, they're going to be accretive to your culture. If they're philosophically aligned on the planning front, whether it's a new employee or a firm that you're looking to acquire, whatever it is, it's going to make it so much easier on a go-forward basis to have them aligned. So, before we even get to them being trained or we get to them coming on site, if it's a new firm that that's joining us, they must be aligned, so that's point number one. From there, the rest of it becomes much, much easier. It's got to be a repeatable process, so you have to have either some kind of software or some kind of really thought-out way to deliver that advice to clients, because financial planning is a really broad thing. Even if you go to the CFP Board's website, you're going to see some really broad topics - it's things like taxes, estate planning, insurance, investments, retirement plan - those are super broad things, and if we just walked up to somebody and said, okay, give me a financial plan, it might be pretty tough for them to say, here you go, good luck, I hope it goes great. Got to have a pretty defined, here's what it means for us to put together and implement a financial plan, and I think we've done a pretty good job of that. It's a repeatable process that's easy to follow, both for advisors and for clients. And in the end, the goal is to deliver something your client can understand. If you get to that point where your client gets this end deliverable and they really are connected with it, both emotionally and from an intelligence standpoint, the likelihood that they're going to implement something, whether it is that thing they need to do for their tax return, like a Roth conversion or getting a revocable trust, whatever it is, that likelihood goes way up if they have an understanding of what it is. Now, from a consistency in planning experience. Yeah, you've got to have that repeatable process, but that doesn't mean you should deliver it to every client the same way. That would be a massive, massive mistake. So, you've got this repeatable process, but that doesn't mean that every client should hear the result in the same manner. You've got clients that are really big analyzers, you've got clients that are maybe a little bit more personable and emotional and could care less about the numbers. You've got to make sure that your delivery is tailored to whatever client you're talking to, so repeatable process. But then once you get to the point of delivering it to your client, you want to make sure you're communicating that in such a way that it connects with whoever you're talking to, and you should get a better understanding of that. I mean, at that point, you've probably spoken with that individual several times, and you better understand maybe they're an engineer, and they want to know every single formula behind every single number. Maybe they're teachers, and they just want to know, am I okay? And I know those are broad generalizations, but I think it helps get the point across.
Danny Noonan
We had a recent guest on, and I think we made the joke that compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world. And then later on the conversation, we reached the point where alignment of interest is the ninth wonder of the world. And you touched on alignment earlier in that answer, and I guess one of the questions I'd have for you is, you think about the wealth managers and the planners that you oversee, you know, what are some of the common characteristics and personality traits that make for folks that are good and strong in those roles.
Jeff Stolper
Well, number one, you've got to be just a generally likable person. I know that's a weird answer, but people want people want to engage with and implement things from people that they generally enjoy, so you want to be a positive person that is fun to be around, and then you're more likely to have your client when they see your name on their phone, they get excited, they think, "Oh, this is amazing, Danny's calling me, I'm so excited to talk with him, and I'm going to listen to whatever he has to say, and probably do it. So, number one, before you get to emotional intelligence and the analytical abilities and communication, all that stuff. I think the number one thing is that you were just a likable, positive person.
Danny Noonan
I just took out my Sharpie and wrote that down, so I won't forget that one.
Jeff Stolper
You already know it, but I think from there you've got to have somebody, which you touched on early on, that can really take a complex topic and distill it down for a client. Then you, like we talked about already, implementation goes way up, they feel more connected, they're probably, if they understand how their portfolio is going to weather some kind of storm, they're going to feel more comfort knowing that they're okay during those times of volatility, so communication and just distilling complex stuff is very important. And then third, I think it's just doing whatever you say you're going to do, if you can really fulfill your, your commitment to the client, no matter how big or small, whether it's getting paperwork out, whether it's implementing some kind of technical thing, whether it's placing a trade, or sending money on a day you said you're sending it, you've got to garner your client's trust, and you've got to do what you say you're going to do.
Danny Noonan
Some of the best advice I think is the most obvious, and I think a lot of things you touched on there are obvious in practice, but not necessarily the easiest to implement. For many folks, so it's good to reinforce it. When you think about investing, I think one of the most important variables investors can often control is valuation, for the simple reason that valuations - anybody can go look at the numbers and control what they pay for an asset. In financial planning, I'm curious to know, what are the equivalent variables? What are the key things that clients actually can't control that tend to have the biggest impact on long-term outcomes.
Jeff Stolper
I'm actually going to break that down into two subcategories. I'm going to say what can, what can clients control, and that I'd also love to touch on what can advisors control, because I think they're two different things, but equally important. So, for clients, what you can control: savings rate, spending behavior, asset allocation, tax efficiency. I mean, those are the kind of boring things, but very, very important, right? You've got to know how much you need to save to have success later on, when you're no longer in the accumulation phase. You've got to know what your spending behavior is, and can you continue your current behavior, or do you need to make an adjustment? Your allocation certainly can drive a different result, depending upon your exposure to equities versus fixed income. And then, tax efficiency wise, ultimately an advisor can help with this in a big, big way, but things like asset location, I think, looking at ideas like direct indexing to make sure that you are and tax loss harvesting, you are maximizing from a tax office standpoint. What needs to be done? Another one that I don't think is is talked about enough for clients is time horizon. No, you can't dictate how long someone's going to live necessarily, but the timing of retirement, the timing of major withdrawals, claiming benefits, that's more what I'm talking about, and I think is a very controllable thing that advisors can help with too. For the advisor, I think that there are really three things that you can do as it relates to variables controllable within a financial plan: simplification, education, and being action-oriented, so you've got to simplify to make sure that your client fully understands and connects with whatever advice you're giving. That does not mean that you can give them like 100-page financial plan at the end of your meeting that they're never going to look at again. You can educate your client, so that they again have that connection that stems from simplification, and then action-oriented. If you can, at the meeting where you are delivering a financial plan, take some kind of action, even if it's a small win. The engagement from your client is going to go through the roof. They're going to see that you're getting stuff done for them right away, and they're going to want to come back and back and back, and more and more and more. They will be you not just as an order taker, but as an advisor, someone who can get stuff done. So, there's a lot there.
Danny Noonan
No, it's a great answer. There's a lot of things I could follow up on with what you just said. The one I'm going to jump in on is asset location. I know that firms like Creative are excellent at this, but a lot of clients, they tend to view each account in isolation. When you do holistic financial planning, you're bundling everything often together. So, I think what you're probably alluding to there is that you package it, you have qualified accounts and non-qualified accounts, and in many cases, if you own something like real estate that pays off income, you're going to want to own it in your tax-deferred accounts. Can you just expand on that? Am I on the right track in terms of how I'm thinking about asset location.
Jeff Stolper
Yeah, you nailed it. You want tax-inefficient income, so let's say ordinary income, which is taxed at the highest rate, to be in some kind of tax-deferred account. So, if it's fixed income that's kicking off interest, you would want that in, like, an IRA, whereas if it is an equity, and when you go to sell it, or the qualified dividend income is at some kind of preferential capital gains rate. You would put that in a taxable income. Yeah, so you can really drive a decent amount of value just by making sure you have the right investment in the right account.
Danny Noonan
Yeah, more often a lot more value than people tend to realize. I think that's kind of an important aspect of finished planning that gets overlooked as you move up the wealth spectrum, complexity tends to increase alongside the dollar amounts. What are some of the biggest planning shifts you see as you move from lower net worth to higher net worth clients? Where does the planning process become meaningly more sophisticated?
Jeff Stolper
Well, I think the process where you start actually should be somewhat similar, not exactly, but somewhat, because you've got to have that fundamental understanding, whether you're worth $100 million or you're worth $2 million you've got to understand where you are today, and that's what a plan can do, so, so well, but as you go up the ladder, you're looking at more complex topics when it comes to maybe concentration risk and a need to diversify, so often when you do have someone with a high level of net worth, that is because maybe they worked at a company and that company just went gangbusters, and they have a connection to the company, so they've never sold any of the stock before, big concentration risk, or what? All, what else you see is maybe they owned a business, and they still own that business, and there's a big concentration of their wealth tied to that, so that's part of it, asset protection, making sure as wealth or net worth goes up, you have the appropriate insurance or the right asset protection in place, which you can also do with certain kinds of trusts to make sure that you're protected on that front. And then the two big, the two biggest ones I would say, tax planning and estate planning. From a tax planning standpoint, there are a lot of opportunities. If you're charitably inclined, you can do things like Roth conversions, and then estate planning. Lastly, where we have a lot of expertise, especially when you get into taxable estate, the taxable estate realm, you can look at things like slats and intentionally defective grantor trusts a lot of ways from an efficiency standpoint to make sure you're maximizing the overall value and minimizing what I would consider probably the highest tax rate in terms of the estate tax.
Danny Noonan
One of the things that Jeff just alluded to was kind of helping clients prepare for liquidity events. There's a great article in the Wall Street Journal over the weekend, called “stock gains without all the taxes.” It really gets into direct indexing and some of the variations of it, including enhanced direct indexing, where you can potentially use leverage to create more losses in a shorter time horizon for clients that are coming to those events. I know those have become very popular, and for the higher net worth clients, it seems like those are very popular. You guys seeing that at Creative? It sounds like that's what you were alluding to, if I understood correctly.
Jeff Stolper
Correct. Yeah, we're we're looking for every opportunity we can to make sure that we're doing right by our clients, whether it's looking at some kind of new idea or some kind of new product that's been established, or if there's an opportunity on the planning front to make sure that we can maybe bundle deductions in a year when they're going to have that liquidity event. We're looking at all of it. You're correct.
Danny Noonan
Yeah, and then maybe on the negative side, I know you have a firm like yours, being a financial planner, you get involved when you know things aren't necessarily going well for clients, and I think a recent example of that would be something like Spirit Airlines and the bankruptcy, you know, when events like that happen, and it's if you have clients that are pilots or work for Spirit in a corporate function, how does the firm mobilize around those clients dealing with kind of these sudden extreme events of uncertainty?
Jeff Stolper
Well, I don't think you can just mobilize in the moment, I think you have to be prepared for it before, so if we were to liken it to, I mean, mobilize is kind of like a military term, you've got to put your military together first, so you then can mobilize, but you've got to make sure that your client is educated and they fully understand what the impact is going to be to them, and hopefully that they're going to be okay, whether that's how you've got them invested, and they are diversified, so maybe Spirit Airlines isn't the only position in their portfolio. I really hope not, or that they have enough of a of a surplus or a positive outcome in their financial plan, such that the one negative impact or the one event is going to be a temporary uncertainty or a temporary impact, and then longer term they're going to be okay. So, it's an education thing on the front end. I'll give you another example that would be like one Silicon Valley Bank was having some some volatility. We were able to go through, and because of the way our planning software is designed, we actually could get a list of every client that had accounts. Now, we don't know account numbers or anything like that, but we knew what clients had accounts at Silicon Valley Bank, and we were practically calling them to talk through, hey, here's the implications, what could it mean, all of that too. So, it's a very education upfront, but then super proactive when the moment comes.
Danny Noonan
I'm trying to keep all my questions planning centric, but this one will dip into to the investment side of things, and you mentioned preparing ahead of time is a key tenant, whether across kind of the investment function, and I know one of the things that you all say internally is that the wealthiest investors tend to be strategic, they're not trying to exploit short-term events. It's particularly relevant right now. I'd love for you to kind of unpack that idea for us and tell us what the application of that is in practice.
Jeff Stolper
Well, I think that you, from the very early onset of a client relationship, have a real opportunity to make sure they're philosophically aligned, so that could be on the investment front, it could be on the planning front, it could be on so many different things, but you've got to make sure that your client fully understands that you're really designing a portfolio that is for the long term, and it's going to weather whatever the future brings, whether it is an event-driven downturn, whether it's more of a systemic downturn, and you need to look to maybe the fixed income portion of the portfolio for the duration of that event, whatever it is. You make sure that I keep saying this, and I'm sure that the listeners are wanting something else, but you've got to make sure that you educate up front. You've got to make sure. That they fully understand. Okay, this is how my portfolio is positioned. We're going to be okay. We've talked about this. We know it was going to happen, because it is inevitable that something's going to come up, and there is going to be some kind of market downturn. But in the long term, I don't think there's a 20 year period in the market that there's been a down period. So you've got to make sure that the client understands you're focused on the long term, and then we're going to help them emotionally through the short term.
Danny Noonan
Yeah, I think there's a lot of great charts on that very topic. I think one of the more interesting ones is that if you go back like 1975 I think the average entry year draw down on US large cap stocks tend to be something like 14% but the annualized return during that time is something north of 10% so you got to be prepared for those drawdowns to kind of take advantage of the recoveries.
One last investment question: diversification seems to finally be turning the corner. If you go back to January last year, 2025 non-US stocks are outperforming US stocks. The running joke in wealth management that we often say is that diversification always means having to say sorry with the planners, advisors you work with. Are people happy to be doing less apologizing these days?
Jeff Stolper
I can say so. We certainly have international exposure, and it, yeah, it's been more favorable. I can confirm that, that is, I think, appeased a lot of our clients and advisors alike.
Danny Noonan
I'd be failing as a moderator if I didn't ask about artificial intelligence. I guess my question would come in two parts. First is kind of thinking about the topic from a long-term perspective at the firm level. What's the internal view on AI, and how it might impact the future of the advice business?
Jeff Stolper
I think that it's going to create a real opportunity for people from the standpoint of being more efficient, so they can spend more time with their clients. So, if you look at all the stuff that we do, there are clear applications, whether that's on the estate planning front and fully understanding what someone's trust document does, or even making a request from your operations team and making sure the paperwork is going out very quickly. There are a lot of opportunities, I think, for advisors to spend less time doing what maybe they, they have to do, and spend more time doing what they want to do, which most people get into this, into this industry, into wealth management, because they want to be with people, and they want to help people, and I think what AI is going to do is it's going to enable them to do that more, and that means that so much of it's going to be coordinated. I don't know if it's by an agent or by a specific application or some coordination of all of it, but that's what I see as the future. I see it's going to maximize the ability of those that are already great at conveying information and connecting with people, and it's going to allow them to, I think, have more fulfillment out of their day to day.
Danny Noonan
Interesting. The second part of my question would be around the current AI use cases, and kind of your day-to-day job. Are you seeing real productivity improvements yet for you and your team.
Jeff Stolper
I view this in a couple different segments. One I would say is on the day to day in meeting. Second I would say is on the research front, and then third I think is what's coming. So, in meeting, we're using things like note takers. We are using that to make sure that we're capturing accurate client information, and then we also can intra team make sure we're communicating really well. And then as you look at from a research standpoint, there's a real opportunity there to speed things up. Now you really have to double check the answer, which is great, because at Creative, we can double check that with a CPA that's on the team, or an attorney that's on the team, or an insurance specialist that's on the team, but it's really helping there. And then, more broadly, what I think you'll see is it's going to help us drive results for clients, so it'll help come up with some kind of recommendation quickly. You'll then be able to coordinate that and implement really, fast. Where now you've got to read the trust document, you've got to read the insurance policy, you have to interpret it, come up with the result, then deliver that to your client. I think that whole process is going to be set up as well.
Danny Noonan
Yeah, it'll be interesting to see how everything shakes out. I feel like, you know, as you put your finger in the wind and kind of sense where things are headed, there's an equal amount of trepidation as well as excitement about where things are headed. So, it'll be interesting. We spoke with the founder and CEO of another large Midwest RIA in recent weeks, and one of the points he made was that it takes 20 years to become world class at something, and one of the things he didn't have an answer for, but was wondering about, is will AI have the ability to be as effective as a CFP in their 20s, and it's a role that he made the point that is currently suffering through a shortage, they can't find enough of them, so he made the point that it may solve a labor problem that his company is having and may potentially get worse. Is that something creative is thinking through as well.
Jeff Stolper
Well, I don't have a great answer there either. If it's going to be as effective, I wish I did. Maybe I can real quick ask ChatGPT and see what it comes up with, but I do think it's going to change what that new entry-level CFP type person is going to have to do now, here, what we're focused on is making sure they're trained and engaged, because you never want an advisor to turn off the planning portion of their brain. You don't want them to become the AI model, right? That just literally, you type in a question and they type out an answer. You've got to know how to deliver that information in empathetic way, you're emotionally tied to your client, so that they respond to it well. So, I don't know, I mean, it's going to clearly speed up. I think that's a great point. I don't think it's going to take the full 20 years to become world class at the knowledge portion. I do still think you're going to need a lot of experience to become an expert or world class at the delivery of information and reading your client and making sure they're understanding it and making sure you're emotionally connected, that part still is going to take the same level of experience, that's nothing you can learn from an AI model, the actual engagement with your client, but yeah, the more technical nature, coming up with recommendations, coordinating stuff quickly internally, whether it's with one of your custodians or whatever, maybe that part is going to come up much, much faster as far as solving a labor shortage.
So it's interesting, we do recruit at the college level somewhat and and we have been having just way more applications than we have been able to handle, so lots of people I think are are interested in this space, and I think it's because if you look across maybe the College of Business, although CFP programs sometimes are not in the College of business, maybe a topic for a whole different podcast. If you look across the college of business, you've got things like finance, accounting, economics, maybe in there, but not necessarily the same college. And if you want something that's truly going to combine a lot of different things and gets you super client-facing fast, I think wealth management is very attractive to young people. So, they're looking at it and they say, okay, I can really use the analytical portion of my brain and still get to do some of the cool stuff on that front, and I get to help someone at the same time. It's a pretty compelling thing, and that says I'm in, I do interviews for, for so many different people across the firm, but as I'm speaking with new entry-level, younger candidates, that theme keeps coming up over and over again, that they're interested in it, because they get to combine so many different components they've had throughout school, they get to start using it really fast, they get to be in front of clients really fast, and they get to be fulfilled. I think that that's actually going to be what drives more people towards this industry, if we position it the right way, and they make sure they know it exists.
Danny Noonan
So, the question I wanted to ask you next was, where do you suspect human judgment will continue to matter most? You kind of touched on it in that answer, there, so I guess the way I kind of rephrase the question would be, you know, in terms of triumphing over AI, is human to human connection the thing that could ultimately still matter more than technology, is just humans with technology,
Jeff Stolper
I hope so, if it's like, if it's human, I was hoping for more confident answer than that,if it's human to technology, I mean, that would just.. there's probably a movie out there that exists that's like human to technology connection. Yeah, I think that's going to be it. You maybe at some point in the future, I'm not trying to be a doomsday or here, but maybe at some point AI will be good at interpreting human emotion, but for today, and what I see, at least on a go forward, I think humans are going to be best at that.
Danny Noonan
One of the podcasts I listen to is from the folks at Ritholtz Wealth Management, and Josh Brown. I think he made the joke that, you know, wealthy folks, they don't, they don't talk to robots. So I'm hoping that that will be ultimately what keeps humans in business for the foreseeable future.
Jeff Stolper
I hope so.
Danny Noonan
To close this out, you know, I'm gonna pay homage to the podcast that you host. Down the middle, you close every episode by giving out a tip of the month. Why don't we do that here, Jeff? What's your tip of the month?
Jeff Stolper
I'm honored. Okay, so I know that many of your listeners are financial advisors, and this is actually gonna be a tip for them. So, I would spring clean your financial plans, we're. It's mid-May, close enough to spring. We're on the heels of tax season, and there may be opportunities you can take now to better position your clients for the remainder of the year. Review their withholding, should they be contributing to an HSA? Maybe there's some kind of charitable thing you can do, or just a general touch base. You don't want to do all the stuff that we've been talking about throughout this episode, you don't want to do it just one time. A plan needs to be ongoing and revisited on a go-forward basis. So, for the advisors out there, make sure you're finding a way to systematically revisit it on at least an annual basis, and right now may be the perfect time.
Danny Noonan
That's awesome. I'm going to steal from your co-host. Happiness needs planning too. Schedule your fun first: vacations, dinners, weekend trips. Make sure to put joy on the calendar before other items fill it. That's my tip of the month.
Jeff Stolper
I love it. That's a good one. Good one.
Danny Noonan
And there you have it, another episode of Simple But Not Easy. We're grateful to Jeff for making time for us. Before we depart, please consider leaving a rating on Apple or Spotify, so others can find us, preferably four or five stars, but if it's something less, we'll use that as feedback as an opportunity to get better. Until next time, thanks for listening.
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