Episode 260 – Secrets of a Thriving Study Group Part 1: Lessons from 25+ Years of Success

Episode Transcription

This is the Ultimate Advisor Podcast, the podcast for financial advisors who want to create a thriving, successful and scalable practice. Each week, we’ll uncover the ways that you can improve your referrals, your team, your marketing, and your business operations, helping you to level up your advising practice, bring in more assets and create the advising practice that you’ve dreamed of. You’ll be joined by our hosts, Bryan Sweet, who is moving fast towards a billion dollars in assets under management, Brittany Anderson, the driving force for advisors looking to improve their operations and company culture, and Draye Redfern who can help you systematize and automate your practices marketing to effortlessly attract new clients. So what do you say? Let’s jump into another amazing episode of The Ultimate Advisor Podcast.

Bryan Sweet 1:06
Welcome to the Ultimate Advisor Podcast. Now, my voice sounds a little bit different. You’re usually listening to Brittany Anderson, who does a lot of these podcasts. But with me today are some of our newest members to the ultimate advising coaching team. And we’re going to talk a little bit about the benefits of study group. We’ve been very fortunate to have a study group for over 25 years. And it’s been one of the most impactful things that I’ve been part of, and we wanted to share why you might want to form one if you’re not part of one already. So let me just quickly introduce Brian Heckert, and John Moshides and let them maybe start talking a little bit about our study group, how it got started. And some of the things that they find most helpful

John Moshides about Go ahead, John. Well, we all met as a result of our involvement in the million dollar roundtable many years ago, and the roundtable had an opportunity for you to throw your name into a hat and be introduced, like thinking members that were also interested in study groups. So 11 of us got together for coffee one day at a Chicago meeting. And we started to set the vision for what we were hoping to accomplish and kind of set the ground rules of how we would set it up. And we decided to meet that November in Las Vegas, and we all came together. And that was the birth and it’s morphed many times over the past 25 years, we’re down to five members now from the original oven. Some have left on their own, they just wasn’t for them. And others we had to ask to leave because they weren’t participating in a level that was acceptable. And we call our group given grow in we’ve lived by that mantra for many years, you must give in as a result of everyone giving we’ve had tremendous growth. So Heck, what would you add to that?

Brian Heckert 1:55
Well, I would add the impact fulness at the early stages of our fashion, you know when you come in, and if you make it through the first few years, probably hitting on a level of success. And you hit at about that three to five to eight year mark, you hit that point of what’s now when we all started, we were all insurance based and just at the forefront of financial planning. And the transition from a sales practice to an advisory practice is more difficult looking back on it than I think any of us dream you go from, from a situation where that next idea drives your grow to an idea of how does your practice drive. And I think that’s been the instrumental part of what we’ve done. Some of us still are heavily based in in insurance based products, all of us are invested in based in financial planning. And the transition from that has led to us running business not running an appoint and study group was imperative in my development, I think the rest well, so where it started and what I think was the key and the success of how we started was the rule that share no matter what your discipline became going, you shared your ideas, and each one of us grabbed on just a little bit of that, see if that this new environment was the direction we want to go. And I think it was the group affirmation that kept it.

Bryan Sweet 4:19
Yeah, you know, one of the things that I have found, you know, thinking back and preparation for doing this today is you know, we were all 25 plus years ago, you know, doing pretty well we’d made million dollar round table and so there’s some level of success but with the help of each other and each of us pushing each other to reach our own individual goals. It’s been interesting that the five of us now are my, I would guess are in the top one 2% of all, you know, the financial advisors in the space these days, and I would attribute a lot of that just to the time and and information that we’ve shared together and But it’s been, you know, a growing process. And so maybe talk a little bit about why even if you’re not, you know, at the level that you want to be, why would you want to get started early to create a study group and, and, you know, give some direction on how do that,

John Moshides 5:19
as I look back, you have to have a certain mindset like a bring perspective to that question. One is, you have to want to improve, you have to want to grow both personally and professionally, and do it the right way. Because as we came up, it was a very humbling experience. I mean, our study group guys knew more about my personal and professional life than my own spouse did some of the things that we share, they knew what your income was, they knew where the skeletons were in the closet personally, and would challenge us to clean up your act or think a little differently about this issue or break out of your comfort zone. Because if you don’t grow, you go the other way. And I would say you have to survive, no study group last 25 years were a real exception to the rule in has survived, because we’ve constantly challenged each others to look at our lives in our professional life much differently than when we started.

Brian Heckert 6:19
So I’ll expand on that. And I think, you know, again, it professional development is one thing, but all the success in the world will never overcome a failure at home has been a mom hated speaking. And I think that’s the key that kept us together. All of us who were married, going into this are still married to the same key man, there was we always had fun talking about business. But there was no funny there was no distraction from our primary mission of being good spouses, good community leaders, it was in sync with what we’ve done. And I think that’s the key of, of what happens, you know, we’ve talked about how do you bring other people into that, and we’ve had people who’ve died with coming in, that didn’t have those same values of alignment. And not that that’s wrong, but it was wrong for the mission that we were on. So I love the fact that we’ve not only been able to incorporate business success ideas, personal success ideas, and be able to challenge each other.

Bryan Sweet 7:10
Yeah, I would agree. As John alluded to earlier, we started with 11. And the name of the study group group is given grow at in the early stage, it had to be given go when you weren’t doing enough giving. So maybe let’s chat a little bit about how we structure the meetings and maybe the evolution because one of the things that we do today, which I find very fascinating is we get together every Tuesday morning via zoom for an hour and talk about whatever. Now one of the great things is, the four of you, in the study group are some of my best friends. And so we have a great time together. But you know, we push the envelope and cause each other to do some great things. So maybe share a little bit about how we started and how did it grow to where we actually meet an hour a week.

Brian Heckert 8:04
So you know that it first we met three times a year, and we quickly found out that that was tough to coordinate 11 schedules even back then. So we started in 1998 was our first full and so you had that and then we you know usually incorporated around another meeting, which at that time, so the meeting structure was come in, do a dinner, and then two days of intense ideas, but also a few entertaining things like we’d play golf for those that played golf, we’d do an adventure get to know the local area, we’d go to a successful advisors off. And you know, other people in the profession who were at the pinnacle, we wanted to hit with share ideas with us. So that was the structure and then it quickly within a couple years came down to to meet. And as people you know, left that organization or this organization, we couldn’t get together, the daily or the weekly meetings that we’re in right now was the genesis of John’s it to in the middle of all of the uncertainty of COVID was, hey, let’s talk about what’s going on. And we’ve kept that, which I think is what holds us more together. We know about the things going on immediately. So it takes that little bit out of our regular me, but it expands that opportunity. We don’t have to rehash the things we’ve talked about. And

Bryan Sweet 9:21
I think one of the things about zoom and you know, maybe COVID causing zoom to become so popular is that literally any group of people can now get together. You know, so if the reason you haven’t started a study group was because I didn’t want to travel or the added expense. It’s a great way to get to know another group of people to see are we going to be able to hit it off? Do we share the same values? Can we help each other, you know, promote and grow? And so I would encourage anybody just if they’d wanted to get a group going started on Zoom and you can see and find out whether you know, each and every person is going to be a fit. And then you can take it to more in, in person meetings, which we continue to do two times a year.

Brian Heckert 10:10
Yeah, our our second generations in our practices, which in my situation are also my second generation, my two sons, Brandon and Michael, and a couple of the other advisors in the other offices do that they started their meetings via zoom and have yet to have an end. So very easy to accomplish what we do with Rob, I think that’s key, I think that that kind of, you know, puts the cherry on the windscreen in our experience. But I agree with you 100%. Brian, it definitely a way

John Moshides 10:38
in fundamentally where we started, if you recall, it would rotate in, we would one of the meetings would be on one of our individual offices. So everybody would come in and they would see your operation, they would meet your admin team, they would see how you ran your day to day business, which was invaluable with while everyone was building the client experience they were delivering. And then I think as I look back in what has really kept us together all these years is we’ve continued to evolve where it used to be just us. And then we decided, wait a minute, what a golden opportunity for one of the two meetings to bring our admin team or our office managers and share ideas of how to improve the administration of our respective offices. And what a great getaway for those in our offices, because we always like when we’re sent away on go away meetings, and somebody puts a little gift on your bed that how nice they are feels we were able to deliver that experience. And in my case, my main office manager who recently retired was with me 28 years, and then the one that’s in her place now has been with me 20 years. So the point is this culture that we develop this sense of family as opposed just employees evolved at a given grow. And then it continued to evolve second in line or up and coming Junior advisors, we had a meeting specifically designed for the role they would play in our organization. And how about this one, we created a spousal meeting every other year, and our wives ended up liking each other, you can’t take that one for granted. And we’ve done some magnificent things where we would have the business side of the meeting and a whole bunch of fun and the girls got to know each other. And to this day, everyone is really great friends. So it’s been a great story. And Brian, one of the Brian’s maybe should come out a little bit on our book, which we call study group success story. And yeah,

Bryan Sweet 12:30
I think that’s a great opportunity to share that all of us in the study group are, you know, frequent people of grace stages and talk about, you know, different items. And one of the things that we all get asked a lot is, you know, what’s kind of been one of your secrets to success, if you will, and all of us always have the same answer. One of the things is the study group. And so because we heard that so often, and we’ve been asked to speak on study groups, actually around the rock around the country, and the world, if you will, now we were in Africa and spoke on the topic. But we decided we’d write a book because it is unusual for a study group to stay together as long as as we have. And so maybe there was some secret sauce or things that we did different that we wanted to share. And if anybody else could get as many benefits, as the five of us has gotten, you know, we wanted people to be able to figure out like, how do I go about doing it? Because you know, it is kind of rare for it to one even have one and two for it to last that’ll maybe share the book, John? And and, you know, where can they get it? And what’s, what’s included? Yeah,

John Moshides 13:40
study groups success story, I’m sure you can still find it on Amazon. It’s a small paperback. It’s a quick read. But we’ve laid out kind of all the rules of engagement. Now give you one. As I again, as I recall, we made a rule that expenses would be split down the middle, irrespective of what your airfare cost was, or if you ordered a steak when someone else ordered a sandwich. So we took all the air fares for our meeting, we put it in the pot divided by the number of attendees. Same thing with food, same thing with extracurricular activity, and I know that’s a hard pill to swallow for some people. I mean, why about one lot of older ladies go out to dinner, the first thing they ask the server for is a separate check, right? But I’m kidding about that one. But we never did that. And we never complained about that. And Brian Hecker drinks more Bud Light than anybody and I’m sure he owes me a couple of cases over the years but it all kind of works out. Well

Brian Heckert 14:42
and you know that we joke about it but that even went to the extent of if you missed a me, you missed a meeting uses a hard cost of everybody else getting together and that in itself became an encouragement but you also got the benefit of it too. It wasn’t a free load where you know, we We’ve all been in situations where somebody doesn’t show up because they don’t want to be there. And they still get the benefit. This allowed us in you that meeting on a plus level, but yet share those expenses with all those who took time. Yeah,

Bryan Sweet 15:12
I find that fascinating, because, you know, this is our 26th year, I think. And I think literally, there’s only been two of us that have ever missed one meeting out of, you know, whatever, how many hundreds of meetings that we would have, would have had. So obviously, we all get a lot of value out of it. And it’s just been been kind of a fascinating run, what other benefits and things would you want to pass on to others, to encourage them to start a study group and like, who would be the people that they would want to look for that would have some similarities to make the likelihood that it would be a success, right from the get go? Yeah,

John Moshides 15:53
we decided way back when that we wanted people from different geographic regions. So you didn’t want someone from your own city, we wanted those that were associated with different broker dealers, or company affiliation. So we wanted different perspectives. And some might say, I’ll, you know, they’re gonna try to poach my guy, or he’s gonna, it never happened, no one ever left their arrangement as a result of hearing someone speak and saying, Oh, my God, they have a better arrangement than I do. That never once happened. So that was, I think, critical to our success. And I had some folks I live in upstate New York area, western part of the state. And I had some people that knew about our study group and knew how effective we were in and asked me very aggressively if they could join, and we respectfully had to deny them that opportunity, because it’s not fair for someone in your region, because you are bearing all you are sharing what your expenses, business expenses are, as relates to your revenue, and how much you’re paying your folks and where you’re finding them and how you’re training them. And all these things, not that we’re trying to keep secrets from others, but it’s just more comfortable when I’m talking to someone from Illinois, or Minnesota or New Jersey, and they’re not across the street from it, I think,

Brian Heckert 17:11
you know, to build on that a little bit. Also, I think that was the successes, these didn’t become complaint, you know, when you get two or three people with the same company relationship, the same broker dealer, I’ve been in those groups where it becomes half of a day’s meeting complaining about something they can’t change, where each of us have been very open about it. And you know, it basically comes down to you’re an adult, if you don’t like it, change your situation don’t complain about and that I think has been the other part of our secret sauce is that it allows us to explore, maybe we’ve got a better deal than we think, or maybe we should put up him and look at different opportunities. That that impact. Yeah,

Bryan Sweet 17:52
and one of the things that I personally enjoyed is access to outside speakers that we’ve each brought in to share, you know, whatever that topic is. And, you know, we’re all fortunate that we get to meet some really interesting people that do unique things. But not everybody else is aware of them. So, you know, either on our zoom meetings or at our actual, in person meetings, half of the people that speak and on the agenda are outside people. And I think, you know, that’s one of the secrets. So I would be also one thing as you grow to consider adding because, you know, we’ll all have our own great ideas, but you always have other individuals that are, you know, at a level that maybe you want to get to or have a knowledge base in a certain topic that you want to get better at, and bringing them in to share is amazing.

John Moshides 18:45
And just so you get a sense for the mechanics of it. Our next meeting will be Brian Heckard is hosting in his town in Illinois, and he’s responsible for the logistics. So he’ll arrange the hotel accommodations, he’ll put the dinners together if there’s an extracurricular activity, and typically, one of the other members may assist in the agenda. And we’re talking now about given growth 2.0 are all identifying the next generation within our organizations that are equally as excited to have their own study group as we were when we formed ours and how we continue to nurture that is we step into different parts of our life. The other thing is, we were all just at the elite Wealth Advisors symposium and was which was chock full of magnificent ideas. And part of the agenda will be a look back at everything that was presented in an in depth discussion of Did you hear this presentation, here’s how it can help with the client experience. How are you going to use it? What are you going to do with it? What’s the cost if you bring it in? So Brian Hecker will be putting that together and I’ll probably assist him on that one and we’ll have these kick ass meetings that we’ll have fun we’ll learn we’ll see another part of the world drink a few Bud Lights. I would get there you go

Bryan Sweet 20:00
well, in the as I mentioned earlier, when we got started, we’ll save some of the magic for the next parts. But I want to thank you guys for being part of the meeting you’ll, you’ll hear from Brian and John and also Ron who wasn’t able to be with us today a lot more as time goes on. There’ll be really frequent contributors to the podcast. And each of them is amazing in their own expertise. And you will soon learn that and a lot of my success comes from just hanging around and learning all the great things that these guys have done over the years. So with that, thank you guys for being here. We’ll see you on the next round of the ultimate advisor podcast. Have a great day.

Brittany Anderson 20:43
Hey there, Brittany Anderson here. If you are loving what you’re hearing on our ultimate advisor podcast, don’t keep us a secret. Share us with other advisors that you think would benefit from the messages that you are hearing. The easiest way to do that is to simply send them to ultimate advisor podcast.com. And if you want to learn a few other ways that we could potentially serve you as an advisor, go check out ultimate advisor mastermind.com. As always, we are so happy to have you here with us as part of the ultimate advisor community and we look forward to a continued relationship.