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How We're Uncommon
258 Plays2 years ago
What makes Uncommon Wealth Partners, and the Uncommon Wealth Podcast, uncommon? This week we're spilling the tea on what supports the claim of uncommon in our work. We'll talk wax rings, big bands, refusing to refer, prayer, humility, starting your future with a date night, and taking a team approach. That's not all, but we wouldn't want to spoil the whole show.
For more information about Uncommon Wealth Partners visit uncommonwealth.com.
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Transcript
Introduction to Uncommon Wealth Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
Everyone dreams of living an uncommon life and the best asset you have to achieve your dreams is you. Welcome to the Uncommon Wealth Podcast. We're going to introduce you to people who are living uncommonly. We're also going to give you some tools and strategies for building wealth and for pursuing an uncommon path that is uniquely right for you.
Meet Philip Ramsey and Aaron Kramer
00:00:25
Speaker
Hello and welcome everybody to another episode of the UnCommonwealth Podcast where I am your host, Philip Ramsey. And I'm Aaron Kramer. Okay, can't wait to do this one actually. This is just yours truly. Aaron and I talking about what makes UnCommonwealth so uncommon and things that maybe you do know or maybe you don't. Oh my gosh,
What Makes UnCommonwealth Unique?
00:00:44
Speaker
Philip, you wanna know how I'm feeling right now? Excited. Yeah, but like uncomfortable. This is not our natural thing to talk about. Oh, ourselves? Yeah. How awesome we are.
00:00:54
Speaker
Yeah. This is not the intent. The intent I think for me in shooting something like this is because we are building something that is truly unique. Yes. It is uncommon. And there's some things that we do that people have no idea that we do. Yeah. And so I wanted to clarify and just talk through those things because
00:01:14
Speaker
every one of our team is uncommon and if they are uncommon that's not a good fit candidly and so everyone that is on the team now lives and breathes this whole like hey we want to be doing things differently and we're building a company that way so please don't hear this as like an edification of everything that we're doing right because there's things that we definitely can improve on oh yeah we're working on those right
00:01:36
Speaker
But let me just start, and we have a list of these things, is we don't ask for referrals.
Referral Strategy Without Asking
00:01:42
Speaker
It's huge. I'm sorry, what? Yeah. Yeah. And I can riff on this for a whole like hour, I'm pretty sure. But the main gist of this is when I wasn't in the industry, I was approached by
00:01:54
Speaker
an advisor. We only need to talk about who he was working with, but he talked to me for the first five, 10 minutes and wanted me to, I think open up accounts with him, a life insurance and a disability insurance policy, whatever. But at the end of that first meeting, he pulls out this piece of paper and he had five
00:02:14
Speaker
linked in context that I was connected with, that he was not connected with. Am I painting the scene okay? Oh yeah. Okay. And he said, these are the five people that you know that I don't know that I'd like to be introduced to.
00:02:26
Speaker
And Aaron, real quick for our audience, that means they, Phillip has talked to this guy and met this guy for five minutes. Yeah. Yeah. I think it was a little bit longer. Let's say it was like 35 minutes, but it wasn't long. Okay. Less than a day. Yeah. Less than a day for sure. And those relationships that I've been working on, like something that's poor guy didn't know is like my relationships are like gold. Yeah. If somebody said here's $75,000.
00:02:49
Speaker
or you can have a relationship with this person. I'd be like, I'd rather have a relationship with the person, like throw it away. Like because that relationship is invaluable to me. Now probably dumb example, but to me, relationships are really a high priority. Well, and to edify that there are people out there that won't give referrals because they don't want their name behind that person. Right. That's how big of a deal referral is. Right. So the fact that he asked that within 35 minutes of us meeting was a huge red flag to me.
00:03:17
Speaker
And I remember taking the piece of paper off the table and crumpling it up, and I said, I've been working my whole life to build these relationships, and you think that you're gonna get those in 35 minutes? I was irate. And I was like, I will never do this to people. Because he didn't realize the landmine that he just stepped on. Now, that's their business model, and I just said, if I ever do, I will never ask for referrals. That's just the general business model for most big agencies.
00:03:46
Speaker
To ask for referrals. To ask for referrals. Yeah. And so we've been so blessed to be able to have clients who are like, hey, we want to refer you, people. How do we do that? And this has been a true talk track. And I was like, please don't refer us. Yeah. And they're like, I'm sorry, what? Every advisor would want a referral. And I said, here's how that's going to go. Hey, I've got an advisor that you should go talk to, a financial advisor. How does that make you feel to the client? They're like, not great. And I'm like, here's the deal, man.
00:04:16
Speaker
just be excited about your plan that we just crafted because I'm excited about your plan. If I don't get any other of your friends to be clients, I'm still okay with that because I'm excited about what your plan is. Now in your enthusiasm and your excitement, I have a feeling that's going to draw attention
00:04:32
Speaker
to yourself and what you're doing which i think i really want to do like let's just talk about that but if those people aren't as excited about their finances as you are then they're going to ask you well who do you work with and you'll be excited to say uncommon wealth partners because
00:04:47
Speaker
because they do things different, and finally I'm excited about where I'm going. Now these people are invited into, how do I fill up, or I'll have Aaron Kramer call you. It's just a whole different experience. Yeah, to edify this, though, is funny, because I got brought up in the world where you do ask for referrals. Always hated it. Always felt super gross. Crunchy. So the only thing I could ever do is put a little sticker on the back of the envelope and say, by the way, if you ever have time, I'm never too busy for a referral. That's the best I could do, because it felt so gross. Yeah.
00:05:14
Speaker
But you told me this when I first came over and I'm like, what? This is kind of cool. And then our first big case, I won't mention names or anything, but our first big case we worked on, it ended up turning out really well. And it really, we poured into them. And then the thing that you said that what you wanted to happen actually happened, it was like, hey, these people, I was just really happy about the plan you guys put together. I was just actually just excitingly talking about it. And then they were like, I want to work with them and send us referrals. And I was like, sure, he did.
00:05:43
Speaker
Well, this is awesome. Yeah. So it's not that we don't want to take referrals. We want to try to set our clients up in order for you not to have to promote us, but you're just promoting where you're going and how excited you are. And in that enthusiasm, invite other people to be on this uncommon path with you. Honestly, we just, it's really just taking the stance of like, we're going to get really excited about your plan and we're going to focus on your plan. We're not focused. We're not looking past you. I think that's the thing. Like we're not looking past you. Like when you're going to focus, we're going to focus on you.
00:06:12
Speaker
And if it goes well and you're excited about it, cool. Like I hope you tell people who did it, but if not, who? Cool. We don't care. We're happy that we just got to work on your plan. That's good. Okay. So that's the first thing. So I hope this is like, Oh, that's kind of cool. Not trying to edify us, but this has been something that worked. We want to know like everybody to know like what we do here, I
Celebrating Uncommon Living
00:06:31
Speaker
guess. Absolutely.
00:06:32
Speaker
Okay, the second thing that I want to talk about is the Uncommon Life Seal. This is something that we started at our client appreciation events, man, many moons ago. But we basically give this award a way to two people in our practice that we feel are being
00:06:51
Speaker
stretched outside their comfort zone. They're doing this uncommon path really well. They're doing this uncommon life amazing. They're impacting not only their future, but they're impacting a lot of people around them. We have this award that we give out. It has been awesome. And so every year we get to have kind of a system to track like, okay, who's on track to get the uncommon life seal. And then we kind of have an award and we do that all at our client appreciation events. It's been awesome.
00:07:16
Speaker
but I'm excited. I haven't got a good one out yet. This is, yeah, the next time we have a client appreciation, man, Aaron gets to give out his first award and he gets to be a part of this. It is so encouraging and like to hear these people and see these people win this award that honestly we just made up crying and like.
00:07:34
Speaker
emotionally happy. Like there is something about getting rewarded for sacrificing for other people that is just really neat. So that's what we do at the, uh, one of the things that we do at the, uh, it's a pretty cool thing. I know watching it from the outside of my first year, cause my first year, cause they had, they had to go to our celebration twice. Yep. Yeah. You can't just get it the first time you go. Yep. And then I remember you telling me like, okay, like you gotta be on the lookout for someone that can.
00:08:03
Speaker
Make it on your from your client list there because I came over with a book if you don't know if you're a new listener So I was like, okay. Yeah, I think what about I named off a couple people and Phillips like now Yeah, I was like what is like it has to be a big deal and I was like, okay. Yeah
00:08:18
Speaker
Well, we have somebody now. Oh, yeah, that we worked on. But like, and I'm not saying who it
Unique Company Culture
00:08:22
Speaker
is. I don't want to do it. But like, anyways, I was like, Oh, yeah, it's definitely a different feel. It's not about like money either. It's not about like how much money they have. No, there's nothing to do that. It's like, who is living their uncommon out in such a way that we want to encourage and also recognize? Yes.
00:08:41
Speaker
It's so good. I know it kind of makes us like it's more award for us. Oh, it sure is. Like I want to give you this because I'm so proud of you. It sure is. And I'm glad you said it because there are some stipulations that you have to achieve in order for you to get this. Maybe be in the hunt for it. So, all right, that's good. Okay. One thing that I want to just touch on every week we have a team meeting and every week
00:09:02
Speaker
We pray like I'm just gonna say it like we pray I have I feel like this is just a big component of uncommon wealth and we don't put this on the door But it is a big part of who we are as a company and so that's just something we do internally We don't need to touch on much of that, but I think it makes us uncommon because if there's an HR anywhere
00:09:23
Speaker
in a 10-foot radius, they'd be like, you can't do that. That's what we do. So, okay, let's move on. Client appreciation events. Holy buckets, Batgirl. I can't wait to talk about these. These are my favorite things. I shouldn't say favorite. This is a fun thing to be able to do and be able to appreciate our clients.
00:09:41
Speaker
One, you have to be a client. That's first and foremost. But two, we really wanna, in those client appreciation events, we want you to feel like you'll never miss another client appreciation event, and we're constantly trying to set the bar higher, which has been a little daunting, but also super rewarding.
00:09:57
Speaker
And so some things that we've done in the client appreciation events are ping pong parlor. We rented out a big band, kind of a jazz cabaret thing. We've done a country music theme. We've rented out a mansion. We've done a blind dinner. If you don't know what a blind dinner is, it's scary, but awesome. And we always try to relay this back to the feelings that you are having when you're going down your own uncommon path and you're investing in yourself.
00:10:26
Speaker
So there's always kind of trying to stir up emotions or have an experience together that we're all having as clients and obviously advisors and a company to appreciate people and then also give them a night that they'll never forget. Yeah, that's super awesome you guys do that.
00:10:43
Speaker
Okay, so we've done just smaller events, which I just like those. We've done a wine and cheese tasting event, which has gone off really well. We've also paintballed with people. I really want to get involved on that one.
00:10:58
Speaker
The problem is like, you guys have had these and all my clients are so young, they're still, they can't take time off work. Yeah, so we've just done quirky things. We've also done like a Boone train ride where we rented out the train and we took lunch. What was I doing? I was busy then. Yeah, you were busy.
00:11:15
Speaker
But fun things that we just like to enjoy life with clients, and we just want to appreciate them. So that's kind of like a mini client appreciation event. We also invite people that aren't clients into those things. Here's another thing that we don't do. One, because...
00:11:32
Speaker
Mainly we were just too busy, but after you come to a client appreciation event and you're not a client, we don't engage with you anymore as much as we'd like to. Uh, we just don't really have time. So I think a lot of people will do these client appreciation events or they'll do these events to try to invite people into the practice and then they solicit them or they try to go after and here's what we can do. We don't really do that. Uh, we have enough going on, but we do want to give people a dose of.
00:12:01
Speaker
kind of what it looks like to be a part of the firm. Yeah. In that you can be as engaged or as unengaged as you want to, but it's so freeing to know. And all these little tiny mini events we go with people aren't clients be like, Hey, we're not going to call you. Yeah. Have an amazing time. Yeah. You have somebody that invited you, you know, them. So have a fun date night. Yeah. It's on us.
00:12:22
Speaker
And there's no obligation. Have an amazing time. It's a fun thing to do. It's a great thing. And for anybody that's listening to edify why we don't cause, because it goes back to the whole referral thing. We don't ask for referrals. If you want to be on the team uncommon, that's really cool. But you're going to call, because our onboarding process isn't exactly easy. No. So let's talk about
Client-Centric Onboarding Process
00:12:44
Speaker
it. It's uncommon. It's on the list. So what is our onboarding process here in uncommon wealth?
00:12:49
Speaker
Well, our first is you have to get to know, we have to get to know you. It's an interview process, but when I say it's an interview process, it's not us interviewing you, it's you interviewing us and yes, us interviewing you. 100%. So, Philip usually takes those on. I like those. Yeah, you love those.
00:13:07
Speaker
And the main thing that I'm trying to help is like, do you know what you want that's so defined that we can help and show you what success looks like? Can we track your goals? If you don't know what you want, you guys were just not a good fit yet. Because we are not here to tell you what you want. No. Like that never works out. No. It's like, oh, you know, I show up like, well, I want to do what society tells me I want to do. I need a Roth A, right? I need some life insurance. It's like, oh, that doesn't work out good. Yeah.
00:13:33
Speaker
So we do a different kind of process and the first thing is to get to know you meeting and in that we just try to figure out, hey do you know what your goals are enough to define them so that we can step into them and track those so we know that our job is helping you achieve what you want to achieve.
00:13:48
Speaker
That's really the biggest thing. We're here to serve you. Right. For those people who don't know, it's just not ready yet. Yeah. And we're not here to push a product or things like that. So that's the first thing. The second thing is we get your numbers. Hey, what kind of assets are you working with? And honestly, one of the biggest takeaways from the get to know you meeting, the first meeting is like, hey, go on a date and pretend like money's no object. What do you want to have happen in your life? Yeah. What do you want your days to look like? Start dreaming a little bit. And then after we come back for the numbers meeting, we do
00:14:18
Speaker
obviously talk about what are the tools we're working with, but then also, okay, what is it that we're gonna try to plan out? Which is super fun, and those meetings take a little longer than normal, as they should, because we have to get the technical stuff, but then we talk about kind of the future. But again, I want you to recognize that when I say it's a big process, there's two meetings already, and we're asking you to, a numbers meeting's not a small meeting. We're asking for a lot of statements, things to gather,
00:14:45
Speaker
Not easy. Yeah, not easy. But hopefully it's the last time you ever have to do it. Yes. Uh, and then once we do that, uh, internally we work through, Hey, here are the goals and we have more people looking on those than you would think. Yeah. It's not just there. I'm there. And then we have the whole team that's looking at this to try to dissect it on what things could we do to help them achieve their goals faster. It's kind of a unique process. Yeah. And I will tell you like to throw in there, like me and Phil don't know everything and our team doesn't know everything. So we've had cases.
00:15:15
Speaker
where me and Philip and the team are looking, well, I don't know. All right, Philip, you call your contacts. I'm calling my contacts. Let's figure this out. Right, right. And we have time. And that's why this process takes a little longer. But we feel at the end of the result is something way better. And so after we get all those numbers in the system, the system's super complicated. Yeah. So we've just implemented a 15-minute meeting with either myself, Aaron, and Ashley, which is the person that's punching it into eMoney.
00:15:44
Speaker
And just to look through it, hey, here's how we put it in the system. Does everything look right? Yes. And we've taken this out of the plan reveal meeting, which we're going to talk about in a second, to this 15-minute thing. Because what we were finding is in the plan reveal meeting, we would have times where maybe things weren't exactly the way they should be. Maybe some details were not communicated clearly, or we didn't put in the system correctly. And it was taking a lot more time than what we were doing about, hey, here's our recommendations. Yeah.
00:16:11
Speaker
So we kind of broke this out into just a 15 minute meeting. Hey, here's how the system works. Here's what we input in the system. Does everything look right? Great. Cause then when we do the plan reveal meeting, which is kind of our like, ta da. Yeah. Uh, we get to now show you everything that we've done, why we've recommended what we recommended and then does it handle your goals and objectives? Yeah.
00:16:32
Speaker
And then also add to that, that meeting also helps, because if you've ever been on the end of like, Hey, give me all your numbers, which I've been on this, this side. And if you're a little ADD like me, yeah, here are all my numbers. And I think that I've gotten everything I'm supposed to get. Well, you get into the meeting of the plan reveals like, well, Hey, what about these numbers? It's like, well, you didn't give me those poop. You know?
00:16:54
Speaker
Everybody's human. It's a lot of information to gather in one meeting So we want to make sure that you have given us the most you can and you might have forgotten some you know Yeah, or we misheard to exactly so okay, so then
00:17:09
Speaker
So that's kind of the whole process of our financial planning process, onboarding processes. Yeah. Um, that's kind of the, the, in a nutshell. And at the end of that, Hey, how many times do you want to meet with us? How can we help you achieve these things at a fast clip? Um, or faster than you thought you would and get you excited about finance. But when we reveal it though, what do you want to go? Sorry, I'm going to keep going back because you're missing some good things. It's like, go for it. But it's like, is that like, we're going to try to, we're going to ask you, does this get, is it, did we do what you wanted? Yeah.
00:17:36
Speaker
Did we achieve your goals? Did we achieve your goals? Yeah. Because if he told us no, we're going to go back to the drawing board. Yeah, reset. Guys, like me and Philip have had our team mad at us like, guys, like how many times are we going to go back until we get it right? Exactly. Like, I don't care. Like if you paid us a little amount or nothing or it's we're going to get it right. And so I'm glad that's a big one. It's good. It's good.
00:17:59
Speaker
Okay. Moving on because I think we could, we could truly probably have a podcast for two hours. Oh yeah. Okay. So we all work remotely. We don't have an office. That's uncommon. Yeah. Uh, we made this strategically early on and I heard this, uh, what's his name? What's the advisor's name that does a lot of content creation, financial planner,
00:18:21
Speaker
Kitchess. Oh, Kitchess. Yeah. Yeah. What's his first name? Michael. Michael Kitchess. Okay. So he's a respected, uh, figure in the financial planning space. I heard him talk one time and what he said was like, that's really interesting. And this is what he said. He says the career of an advisor is really interesting where at first you're going to go talk to everybody and you're going to do whatever you need to do to make sure you can get in front of people. So you're going to go to their kitchen table.
00:18:45
Speaker
Yeah. And then there comes a point where you get too successful or whatever you want to say. You have too many clients, you just can't do that. And so then you make them, you get an office and you make them come to you. Yeah. And it inconveniences them. At first, you get inconvenienced. The second stage is they get inconvenienced.
00:19:04
Speaker
Uh, but he's like, we live in the 21st century. He's like, so there's things called zoom and this is before COVID. And so why don't you stay in your office, your house? I can stay in my office. I can have more meetings and then you can be more comfortable. Or if you forget a statement downstairs in the file drawer, you can go down and get it. Why don't we do more of that? And I heard that and I was like, that's really interesting. Uh, but that was before
Embracing Remote Work
00:19:28
Speaker
COVID. So we made an initial kind of a stance of like, let's try to build this. So it doesn't matter if I'm in Florida.
00:19:34
Speaker
or errands and Arizona. Yeah. You can have a meeting and we can still go on as business as usual. And we're going to build a business as that. Well, I think there was a lot of people kind of questioning like, wait, you don't have an office. Yeah. Then COVID hit. And then it seemed like that was one of those decisions that made us look really good. Yeah. Now,
00:19:53
Speaker
Now we do meet with our clients. Sometimes they come over to our house, my house, because we all are based at our house, um, which I love, or we can go to a coffee shop or they can do zoom. So like we kind of have options and I'm never going to be the guy who's going to be like, I'm too busy not to go to your house. I do like in-person meetings, but sometimes just meetings upon meetings, it's like Phillip can't do or Aaron can't do in-person meetings. They have to assume today, or we can try to find another date where you can do it in person. Great. Quite honestly too, like zoom really helped us and,
00:20:24
Speaker
Young people are on the fly. When you have young kids and stuff and you want a financial advisor, they're like, well, you got to come to my office, you know? Or they're going to come to my house. It's like, what am I going to do with the kids? I'm going to get a babysitter. I don't want you to get a babysitter. I want you to spend money on me. Like, come see, like, let's jump on a Zoom. And let's just knock this out. Let's meet each other that way. And then if one parent needs to step aside and change a dirty diaper or get a kid, you know, a new station watch, whatever it is, like, it's totally cool. It's good.
00:20:51
Speaker
Okay, so another way that we are uncommon is how we manage money, which is interesting because my whole career, we've been kind of utilizing money managers and custodians and platforms that we feel like when we start dissecting, we really need to be conscious about fees. And a lot of advisors will tell you what they are charging, but they won't tell you what the full fee is. They won't tell you what the platform fee is. They don't tell you what the money managers fee is. And maybe they do.
00:21:20
Speaker
But what we found is when we really look at that, I have trouble telling somebody, hey, it's all in about, mm, upwards of 2% of your money, which, okay, so how do we do this differently? So we've tried to figure out platforms that have the lowest fee, try to get into investments that have the lowest fee, but also take out money managers. And we have to be mentored by somebody that knows what they're doing, and it has a track record of doing it well. But if we can have mentors to help us and take the middleman out, it only is beneficial
00:21:49
Speaker
I should say it's beneficial for our company on Commonwealth and it's beneficial for the client. So your fees go down as well as our fees and what we can charge. It goes up a little bit. So it's more profitable for the company. It's better access to the market for people. And then we have the fingers on the triggers and we don't use money managers. So that is something unique. And I think a lot of people are going to these money managers and have not been super transparent on all the fees that are associated with it. They're saying it's the average or things like that. Yes.
00:22:19
Speaker
I still love that we use money managers when we did. I agree. I just want our listeners to know that I don't regret that at all because this is my thing. Managing your own portfolios is a big deal.
00:22:32
Speaker
It is. And I know we both agree upon this. This is why we get along so well. Other people's money is not something you fake it to make it. Fake it to make it. Yeah. We don't do that. We don't do that. Like that is not a good thing to do. So you do want to find a veteran that has proven themselves over and over again on how to do this and do this well. Yeah. To teach you how to do it. Because it's one thing to have the knowledge
00:22:54
Speaker
on how to do it, it's a whole nother level of have the knowledge of how to implement it. Yeah, it's true. That's true. Like I've heard plenty of books, we've passed hard exams, we talk about investments all the time. It's a whole nother thing to implement something. Yeah, it's true. Okay, so here's a couple more. We do monthly challenges in our newsletter. I feel like people love it. I think that's why people actually open up our newsletters just because like what's going on in the challenge? Like what do they do this month? Some people are like, when do you have time to work? These challenges aren't hard.
00:23:22
Speaker
Sometimes there are paper airplane throwing, like we can figure out anything. Nerf basketball. We've done a lot of silly things. Um, but I do feel like those monthly challenges were competitive people and we like to compete even at random stuff. And so we do that. Uh, and that's part of our monthly newsletter. And if you want to be a part of that, I'm sure we can get you on that.
00:23:43
Speaker
Oh yeah, it's fun. You gotta love seeing some of the people. You get so competitive over the lowest things. I mean, it's so fun. Yep, it's kind of an issue. All right, million dollar net worth. When you pass a million dollars, we have a little uncommon gift for people. It's kind of fun, so not a lot of people know about that, but we do that.
00:24:03
Speaker
Let's go to the next thing. Yeah, this next one I want to spend a little bit more time on. Okay. All right, go ahead. That's a big one. Family conversations around estate planning.
Legacy Beyond Wealth
00:24:12
Speaker
I think this is huge, guys. Get it. So when you look at the number one issue of people that are fortunate enough to inherit money, they don't spend the money, and the number one fight they have among their siblings is what would mom and dad want?
00:24:27
Speaker
money to be used for. And so they fight about it and then they don't use it. So what we do, well I can't say me, but what you do, if done, use your super powers, we're just like, let's just get the whole family together.
00:24:42
Speaker
in a room for a weekend and let's talk about this. So when we say we're financial planners, we're financial planners, but we take it to the new level of like, nope, we're not just gonna show you some software, we're gonna put you and your family into a room and we're gonna talk about finances. We're gonna help you communicate with that.
00:25:00
Speaker
And so this all stemmed from doing a huge kind of work estate plan and just talking through all the different things with a family up north. And at the end of that, I think I asked him like, well, how are you going to communicate this to your kids? And they were like, well, I don't know. We'll put it in our will. And I was like, over my dead body, will you just put this in a will? Like you've done all this work. Like how will we talk through it? And I said, okay, tell you what, give me a weekend with you and your children and their children's spouses. Yeah. Let's talk through this.
00:25:30
Speaker
And they're like, you need a weekend to do that? You better believe it. Because what we want to talk about is more than just money, right? We want to give an environment that not only can you talk through some hard stuff, but you can also talk about things that happened in the past. Good, bad, core values that you have.
00:25:46
Speaker
And this weekend, it's funny, I'm going to read The Richest Man in Babylon. And the whole premise of that is like the child or son, in this example, wants to have his father's inheritance or like this huge, rich, the Babylon. And he ends up taking his core values that his dad taught him in like, I think, a bag of gold. I haven't read it for a while.
00:26:07
Speaker
but goes out and basically squanders it all and realizes the core values that his father taught him are the most valuable things that he can, he can access and does that and ends up being the richest man in another city. And then at that time, his dad was like, okay, now you can have our wealth too. You know, like you've proven to yourself and he didn't rob his kid of like, and here it is, all of it, take it. Boom. Yeah. Trust fund baby. So I love this. Like I remember you doing this when we started working together.
00:26:35
Speaker
and it blew me out of the way. I remember running home, talking to my wife about this. So, but I'm not gonna say, because I can't even remember it, and I would bash it, so you're gonna say, but I'm gonna remind you what it is. When you ask clients about passing out money, you're like, you can hand down, I don't know, you have a number of things. Four. Four things. There's four things that we talk about wealth transfer. Yes, okay, you know where I want to go. Core values is one of those things.
00:27:00
Speaker
your good and your bad experiences. Like when you think about who you are today, your bad experiences have probably shaped you more than your good experiences, okay? But that's something that you can kind of talk through. And then you have your charitable donations or the way that you give your money or your time. It's either you're gonna give it to somebody or the government's gonna take it. So what's important to you, okay? Then you have money. So if we have four,
00:27:23
Speaker
core values, second thing, good and bad experiences, third thing, charitable giving, and the fourth thing is money. If you could only transfer three things to the next generation, which ones would you transfer? And everybody would be like my core values, my good and bad experiences, and the way that I give my time and my treasures. And so that's the right answer, by the way. And the people that just focus on money,
00:27:48
Speaker
miss those three. But the people that are focused on those three and use their money to unlock those three, they don't really need to transfer any more money because all of the people underneath them have the value that got them to where they're at.
00:28:04
Speaker
What we found is the people who truly focus on those three things will have more money to transfer and the next generation will have even more of a say and more responsibility to then pass the core values down to their kids. It's kind of a Rockefeller type of legacy. That's what I get excited about. So that was what this whole weekend was. And we want to do more of that.
00:28:25
Speaker
I wanna do more family conversations of the hard work that the parents have done, the core values that they have as a family. How do we pass down those things to the next generation? And so that we have opportunity and an open line of communication for everybody. Being facilitated by somebody who's helped them craft what they have and have pretty hard conversations in a very controlled environment for the sake of the client.
00:28:53
Speaker
Yeah. That's it. Family conversations, everyone. That's my favorite one. Yeah. And I think we're going to be probably doing a lot more of those in the future. I'm just foreseeing that. But what has happened in that family and seeing how that all shaped out, it's been super valuable, almost priceless. And the transfer of wealth. That's amazing. I think that's one of the things that's like very like sticks out to me. That's like super uncommon. I love it. And I could do those all day. I loved it. Okay.
00:29:18
Speaker
All right. So another thing I would just want to talk through it. We don't write our own bios. Oh yeah. How quirky is that? I'm sorry. What? Yeah. Bios suck and you never want to write about yourself how awesome you are. So we have a company policy. You don't write your own bio. As we get to know you, we have kind of a questionnaire that we can write.
00:29:36
Speaker
So if you go to our website now and you read our bios, it'll say, we don't write our own bios. This is what the team thinks of them. And so what a joy it is to then all of a sudden get your bios back. Then we hired a ghost writer to actually write this all out. So it's all kind of like, it kind of looks like we wrote it, but we didn't. That's quirky. That's uncommon. I like that.
00:29:53
Speaker
Okay, next thing, the reviews. We review ourselves. We honestly do hold who we're doing business with and how the team is built.
Client Service Over Sales Tactics
00:30:04
Speaker
We hold that in high regard. And so in that, our reviews are a little bit different. So we have core values as a team, and that's what we end up evaluating ourselves. And this isn't just like, Philip evaluates everybody or Aaron, like, no, like,
00:30:19
Speaker
the team evaluates Philip. And here are the things that I think I would want to know if I was just kind of engaging in uncommon wealth is like, what are your core values, right? So high integrity. So it's a big one guys coming from the guy that's underneath the boss. Like if us, the employees don't actually put something on there, that's like,
00:30:40
Speaker
Philip, you need to work on some of that. We get locked in a room until we get like actually give some honest feedback. Yeah, right. So it's like, it's nice cause it shows you the leadership that Philip has. Like Phil wants to know the bad for sure. Don't just feed my ego. Like, no, no, no, I know I'm human. You know? So it's, it's actually a true review all across the board. It's really fun.
00:31:01
Speaker
And it's fun because we have, we all review ourselves on these things. So high integrity is one of them, hardworking, attitude of serving. Man, I can't tell you, like if you don't have that attitude, it's not gonna be good. This service industry is not gonna be for you. Positive attitude, good communicator, believe the vision of the future of the company, resiliency, holy fuck.
00:31:22
Speaker
and then maintain a high level of confidentiality. So these are the things and believe the best in others. That's a big thing. So those are our core values. That's how we do our reviews as a team, 360 reviews, however you want to say it, but that's something quirky. Okay. And the last thing.
00:31:39
Speaker
That was a fun one. Do it. Do it. We don't sell to people. No, we don't close. Have you ever heard of this? Always be closing the ABCs. Always be closing. Oh my gosh. That makes me want to vomit my mouth. I love it. We're here to serve and we're here to provide.
00:31:55
Speaker
for you with what you want from us, and that's it. It's never like, hey, let me sell you something here. Here's the pen, sign on the title. This couldn't be further from what we do. But I think the biggest closing questions that we will ask, and we truly mean it, is like, how do you want us to help you here? How can we serve you from here on out? And I'm okay, sucks, but I'm okay if people are like, I don't ever want to talk to you again. Well, all right. That's good to know. It hasn't happened. I've had it happen where I've told people no.
00:32:26
Speaker
I don't think this is gonna be a good fit. And I probably said it before, they did, but it is one of those things where...
00:32:34
Speaker
You know, we have to really mesh. We have to mesh because we're doing life with people. Yeah. And we want to be in the trenches with others. And so those, I think it's just one of those things that we just don't sell. I don't like to be sold. The used cars salesman makes me want to vomit in my mouth. Nobody likes to be sold. No, I got to probably stop saying that. There was one time somebody gave me feedback, like stop saying that. I got to stop saying that.
00:32:56
Speaker
But anyway, we don't ever sell people. We don't close people. We just wanna, we wanna really inform people. Wait, hold on, we do sell. Hold on, I'm sorry, I gotta take this back. There is one area we will sell. We will sell you on yourself. Leave it in yourself. That time we did. That we will do, like. Page Whitty. Yeah, like, listen to Page Whitty's podcast. We will do that. That happened. So yeah, if you feel like you're kind of beat up,
00:33:23
Speaker
we will encourage you to like stop. You know, like you've got to think differently, like you're valued. You can do this. So we will sell that. That's true. That we will sell. That's the one thing we will sell. We'll close that. Yeah. So all right. You've been listening to the uncommon wealth podcast. I've been your host, Philip Ramsey and Aaron Kramer. Until next time, go be in common. I hope you guys enjoyed the show. And if any questions you have, please reach out. Yes, please. Thanks. Bye.
00:33:52
Speaker
That's all for this episode, brought to you by Uncommon Wealth Partners. Be sure to visit uncommonwealth.com to learn more about our services. Don't miss an episode as we introduce you to inspiring people who are actively pursuing an uncommon life.