Mark Kenney - retirement

Every client should have a plan for their income, investments, taxes, health care, and legacy. Unfortunately, most firms just offer products and rarely help implement strategies in each of these areas of life–which is why it’s so important to us at SHP Financial.

With that in mind, I’m excited to be joined by Laura Russo and Natalia Carmago to give you a behind the scenes look at how we set our clients up for long-term success. Laura comes from the world of trust administration at a major bank, where she worked with ultra high net worth clients, and Natalia brings decades of experience from a large investment firm.

In this episode, we dig into what goes into our client review process, how we create whole-person plans for our people, what your first meeting with us might look like, and the value of keeping things small.

In this podcast discussion, you’ll learn: 

  • Why so many firms don’t give their clients a comprehensive picture of their life, health, or finances through their offerings.
  • What happens in the typical first meeting–and why it’s all about getting to know the client, and not the other way around.
  • The difference between reactive and proactive planning.

Inspiring Quotes

  • “Whether it’s life, business, and what we do here, if you can take care of a lot of the little things and the details, then the bigger things work themselves out.” – Derek Gregoire
  • “We want to sit down with you. We want to learn about you. We want to learn about your family, your situation, and everything in between.” – Laura Russo

Interview Resources

Derek Gregoire: All right. Welcome everyone to another episode of the SHP Retirement Road Map podcast. I’m Derek Gregoire. I’ll be your host for today in a super special show that I’m joined by my team here at SHP. We call them Team Derek. We have Laura Russo and Natalia Camargo. How are you both doing today?

 

Laura Russo: Doing great.

 

Natalia Camargo: Wonderful.

 

Derek Gregoire: They say, “How can we cover 25 minutes, 30 minutes of content?” And they said, “Oh, yeah, Derek can talk a lot.”

 

Natalia Camargo: Derek likes to talk a lot, so we’ll be okay.

 

Derek Gregoire: But Natalia, we’re going to make you do the rest and we leave, so.

 

Natalia Camargo: Perfect.

 

Derek Gregoire: But really, I think this show is going to just kind of give you a little bit of background and behind the scenes look at SHP on how we construct our business and how we run our business to make sure that our clients get the best success in the long run. So, before we do that, we have a lot of cool things we’re going to get into. I just want to get to know, I’m sure over the years, you probably heard me too much and probably know more about me than you want to, but I want to introduce the team. So, Laura Russo has been with us five, six years?

 

Laura Russo: Yeah, five years.

 

Derek Gregoire: Yep. And so, tell everyone about a little about Laura Russo.

 

Laura Russo: Oh, man, there’s a lot. Laura Russo, first and foremost, is a mom, so I think that’s important to talk about. But I have an 18-month-old. I’ve been in the business here for five years. Before that, I worked at a major bank doing trust administration, working with ultra-high net worth clients. Before that, I was in a law firm and working, again, a state administration and trust administration. So, as Derek likes to say, I’m his go-to when it comes to anything trust related.

 

Derek Gregoire: Just in the last meeting.

 

Laura Russo: Exactly.

 

Derek Gregoire: Questions that I was like, I got to talk to Matt. As I’m saying, I have to ask, Attorney Laura’s like, “Oh, I know the answer to that.” And married to Alex?

 

Laura Russo: Yeah. Yeah, my husband Alex, he’s a pretty awesome guy. We’ve been together 10 years now and it’s flying by. Yeah, so I officially feel old. I think that’s something important to note. I was saying this morning to a friend, I actually went to a store just looking at clothes and I was seeing things that I wore in middle school and I said, “I’m officially old because I have now a recycled elephant kind of person.” So that was a little horrifying. But you know what? It’s all good, with age comes knowledge.

 

Derek Gregoire: There you go. And thanks, Laura. Natalia, I know Natalia Camargo. She’s been with us for a year and a half.

 

Natalia Camargo: Year and a half, yeah. Correct.

 

Derek Gregoire: And before that, how many years at the private wirehouse?

 

Natalia Camargo: So, I worked for 22 years at a large investment firm. Great career there. Great to come to a smaller place where we focus diligently on clients. We do investment planning, tax planning, health care planning. At a wirehouse, you don’t see that. There, we focus most on investments. So, it’s a huge change being able to cover every aspect of the financial picture for the client.

 

Derek Gregoire: You have some new news, right?

 

Natalia Camargo: Oh yes. So, I recently got engaged a couple of weeks ago. Mike, my fiance, is local as well. He lives in Hingham. And yeah, we’re looking forward to the next chapter. I have an adult daughter. She’s 26 years old. And we love to work out, go to church. So, that’s where we spend our time.

 

Laura Russo: Natalia is the most fit person in our office.

 

Derek Gregoire: Yes, she is. She definitely is.

 

Laura Russo: She runs 18 miles in the morning every morning.

 

Derek Gregoire: She doesn’t have a car. She just runs here.

 

Natalia Camargo: Run to work, yeah.

 

Derek Gregoire: And then she has weights. While she’s on the phone, she does her curls.

 

Laura Russo: But she actually benches her desk.

 

Derek Gregoire: It’s like, well, one more rep before I can talk and take this call.

 

Laura Russo: So, I know when investors were there.

 

Derek Gregoire: So, obviously, we have fun on our team, which is a good time. Coming to work is always fun. We have a lot of the same values, background, and I think the one thing we always– so back 20 years ago, believe it or not, when speaking of Keith being old, Keith and I started SHP, the goal was always to get to a point where we could offer full financial planning.

 

And as we kind of learn more about the business and as we got a little bit older and wiser, we kind of saw the CFP standard as being we wanted to follow, meaning every client should have the ability to have an income plan, an investment plan, a tax plan, a health care plan, and a legacy plan. But when you go back and you look under the cover of many firms, and to be fair, even our firm 15, 20 years ago, we just had investments in products, right? If you did this or that and that was your plan, was whatever money you put into an instrument and I know you were with a large wirehouse, Natalia, for 22 years, and it wasn’t really a plan. It was more like when you did a review, it was here’s how your…

 

Natalia Camargo: Yeah, you return your asset return level. So, basically, our clients would have someone that handled the CFP portion, that handled the SA portion, that we never touched on health care at all. Anything with taxes, yeah, we would do tax-loss harvesting, but we wouldn’t implement an actual tax strategy. So, that’s where we differ here.

 

Derek Gregoire: Yeah, exactly. So, that’s the thing over here is a lot of people say, well, over the years, every once in a while, people get it when you explain it. But I know people can say, “Oh, you guys are getting pretty big.” Well, we’re big in the scale in terms of like being a startup small company from 20 years ago. But compared to the Fidelity’s and the big wirehouses, we’re not big at all.

 

But the culture is huge here. And so, I think people kind of get nervous as you grow. Are you able to stay in the same culture? We always tell our clients the reason we’re growing if you look at our growth is to make sure the advisory services never change. So, let’s say you go to a local mom-and-pop advisory shop and they probably do a good job, but a lot of times, it’s one, two, three, four individuals.

 

And what I always said was, how can that person manage your money, set up the reviews, prep the reviews, build a tax plan, coordinate estate planning? With us three and our clients and the whole team, there’s so much to do. And Laura and Natalia, you guys know, think of all the behind-the-scenes stuff that’s going on from our portfolio team, from our trading team, from our planning team that a lot of times, the clients don’t necessarily see that. But when we’re meeting with clients, that’s what we’re showing them, all that behind-the-scenes stuff.

 

Laura Russo: Yeah, exactly.

 

Derek Gregoire: And so, I think the main thing we’re trying to– so we built our company, that was kind of the growth trajectories. We want to make sure we support every client. And now, a lot of times, people will ever know we’re talking before our producer, we’re saying, sometimes people will have an advisor or they’ll have a big group, a company, and they’ll hire one advisor to help work with all the clients just to help basically take the load off because it becomes stressful.

 

Then, that client, they don’t really get to know everyone because they’re dealing a little bit with a lot of people, whereas on our team with Laura and Natalia and all of our clients listening know this, you’re dealing directly with all of us. And so, I guess behind the scenes, I know there’s a lot. We kind of think you guys are kind of in the lead advisory role underneath Team Derek. I hate to say my name in that, but that’s what it is. So, all the emails go to Team Derek at SHP. Everything, it’s a team effort. So, I guess, if you each will go to either one, but what’s like a day-to-day, I know it varies, but what’s the day-to-day interaction with clients?

 

Laura Russo: Oh gosh, every day is definitely different. There are some days where we’re in meetings face to face with clients all day, every day. And then there are some days where we’re on the phone with clients all day, every day. And then there are some days where we’re on behind the scenes talking to back offices, to all of the different companies that we work with to help you that broker between them and our client.

 

And then most likely, it’s a mix of that every single day. So, no day is the same as the one before, which I think both of us enjoy that aspect of it. But there’s always something new to learn, something new to do, and it keeps everything really fresh and fun for us.

 

Derek Gregoire: Yeah. Anything else to that?

 

Natalia Camargo: I think it’s wonderful having a team. Like even today, Laura was in a meeting and she messaged me and I’m in behind the scenes because I wasn’t in that meeting and I’m able to respond and we work together to find a solution or a question that she had. So, that’s wonderful. And yeah, reiterating what she was saying, every day is different. We cover different aspects of the business.

 

Derek Gregoire: Yeah. So, there’s a lot, like just to look at this week alone, we have a lot of client reviews this week. And so, prepping for a client review isn’t just like, here’s your performance statement.

 

Laura Russo: Right. There’s a lot that goes behind the scenes.

 

Derek Gregoire: Yeah. So, I think it’s good for everyone to understand. Now, again, before we had a team, we would be one. I would put us in that box of scrambling last minute to get everything done to just, oh, here’s how much you made last year. Here’s how much you lost last year in the market. See how’s everything going. We’ll see you next year. I think it’s good just to give everyone, I mean, obviously, we don’t need to use the exact terminology of like Riskalyze and all the different softwares that we use. But can you give, maybe, Laura, a little background of what goes into just reviewing a client, just prepping for a client review, just a simple client review?

 

Laura Russo: Oh, yeah. So, first things first is we want to look at all of the accounts. So, whether you have accounts invested, whether you might have some life insurance, annuities, everybody’s different. We are looking at each one of these and looking to see, okay, are there any changes that need to be made immediately? Do we have allocation changes? Do we need to make sure funds need to go for RMD? So, it’s almost a list of going through every single account and understanding exactly what needs to be done there and have prepped for the meeting. Really, the goal is to make sure that if anything needs to be done, we’re prepared for it and we’re ready to do it so that we can be as efficient as possible.

 

Back in the day, we would meet with a client and then have a whole list of follow-up items, and that’s how things could easily get lost. But now, we’re a lot more proactive because we have more hands in the kitchen that can really help to be able to facilitate that. So, we’re doing all of that. We’re looking at your income plan. We’re making sure, hey, are we still on track? Are we still making sure that you have enough money to cover your lifestyle, to cover all of your expenses?

 

We’re looking at taxes. We’re looking at opportunities. Actually, it’s really fun. We actually do a whole review of the entire road map. So, we’re looking at the SHP road map always. So, every time a client comes in for a review, it’s not just, hey, we’re just looking at investments today, we’re just looking at income, we’re looking at everything.

 

And some meetings may have more important aspects that need to be looked at. So, for example, we have a client coming in tomorrow who he’s retiring. So, that’s an exciting meeting, but we really need to dig in deep to the income plan for that one. So maybe, this time around we won’t be doing as much work on the legacy side. So, it’s great because we get to really see what is the most important aspect of what needs to be reviewed. We are also making sure all of your statements are there, making sure all of your documents are up to date in your vault if you’re the client and making sure all your accounts have accurate pullings through our portal. So, that’s just a little piece or a little taste. I don’t want to give it all away.

 

Derek Gregoire: So, basically, think of like, for those of you who are not clients, there’s a portal through our SHP portal, that portal links all your accounts that are with us to one spot but also all of your goals. So, what is your Social Security income if you’re retired? What are your expenses? What are your assets? What’s the tax ramifications? So, what it does is it allows us to project out and always stay on track. So, we can look out 3, 4, 5, 10, 15 years. Are we on track? Did income go up? And then for the next year, we map out. Where should the income come from based on taxes, based on the accounts, based on the market performance?

 

And we also have a risk software that gives every single client a current risk number between 1 and 99, and it gives them an idea of their upside/downside exposure. Obviously, if you’re at 3, you’re not going to have much upside, you’re not going to have much downside. If you’re a 98, you can get somewhere really fast and you can also crash really quick. So, it’s almost like making sure every client is aware of their current plan, their current risk.

 

And I always say we always want to, based on all the work being done behind the scenes and I think we do a good job of good people, I think our attention ratio has always been so high because we’re trying to not miss one I, dot every I, cross every T. So, when someone comes in, every year, we’re kind of building out looking at their situation. Can we make it better? Or what can we do to improve it? Or maybe it’s status quo, we don’t really need to make any tweaks.

 

And just a simple project, I know Natalia, you’ve been here a couple of years now, but RMDs, required minimum distribution seems like a simple thing because someone’s like, “Yeah, I have to take my minimum distribution,” but there’s a lot of work that goes into that, right?

 

Natalia Camargo: It does. It is. It definitely is because we look at a strategy with the RMDs. We don’t necessarily just pull the money. We look at how Fidelity is invested. Oh, is the market doing well? Should we withdraw from there as opposed to the annuities? So, it is, there’s a thought process behind that, so yeah.

 

Derek Gregoire: For everything, almost. It’s like for everything. And that’s the whole thing. And I was starting to go down this road earlier. We always want our clients to feel as connected to their money as they ever have. Not necessarily they have to go on and check every day, but when they leave their office for every meeting, whether it’s a six-month review, annual review, they know exactly where they stand.

 

So, on the flip side, we have a lot of luckily enough from the team, I always say people always ask how our team gets a lot of referrals. And I think, obviously, in general, this is kind of like me speaking, open to the public is kind of scary. But people say, “How do you get referrals?” Well, I think you have to have a good culture, which obviously, SHP, thanks to Michelle, Mallory, the whole team, there’s a really good culture set where you get it worked on. But we don’t take ourselves seriously. No one’s better than the other. We all come to work and humble ourselves every day and give an honest day’s work and try to do what we can for our clients and then each other. That’s what it is.

 

I think the culture is a big point. I think our communication is important. You know how I am, if someone misses an email or a call, that’s my biggest fear. So, communication is key, but also the planning that goes into a plan. Clients see after becoming a client how their plan was built and how thorough it is. That to me, the combination of all that, leads to them being okay, this is how I want to help my friends.

 

And so, we are lucky to get a lot of referrals. So, when a referral comes in because I’m old and been doing it 20 years, I can’t take every client on. I wish I could, like back in the day. But with referrals, I’m always there from the beginning to make sure I learn about the client, help build out the plan. But in terms of an onboarding process, Laura, let’s say someone comes in for the first meeting. First of all, it’s super casual because people are nervous. This is their life savings.

 

Laura Russo: Exactly.

 

Derek Gregoire: Sometimes we forget we’ve been doing it so long. Now, these people, whether it’s $500,000, $1 million or $10 million or $20 million, that’s their life’s work. That’s what they’ve worked so hard to save. And so, they come in, some people are very nervous. And our first thing is like, “Listen, don’t be nervous, we’re just trying to help you.” If we can help you, great.

 

Natalia Camargo: If we add value, yeah.

 

Derek Gregoire: Exactly. So, maybe, walk through the process of that first meeting.

 

Laura Russo: Yeah. So, the first meeting is just like Derek said, it’s pretty informal. And I think a lot of people come in with anticipation that they’re going to have to know everything and answer all of the questions correctly. In reality, when you want to work with a financial advisor, they’re the ones that should be able to guide you and make you feel at ease. And I think that is a strong point of SHP is the fact that we don’t expect people to come in and know how to do day trading, how to do all of their investments, and have everything in a perfect bow. If you had that, then you wouldn’t really need our help.

 

So, we want to sit down with you. We want to learn about you. We want to learn about your family, your situation, and everything in between. So, I always laugh because sometimes we even ask questions. One of my favorite questions, what do you like to do in your spare time? What are some of your hobbies? What do you want to make sure you’re making priority for in retirement? So, if you love to travel, we want to make sure that’s a huge goal, we want to make sure you’re tracking with that, and we want to make sure you can do that.

 

So, when we sit down with the clients first, it’s one of my favorite meetings because it’s really building a little bit of trust there, of understanding, okay, these people at SHP, they want to learn about me so that they can help me not just come in and bring my money over so that they can manage it and then see me once a year. We really build friendships and relationships for the long term. Some of our clients, after years and years of being with us, they’re like family to us. When they walk in, they get hugs. Everybody wants to know how their kids are, their grandkids. It’s a really great experience.

 

And I will be pretty frank, is that sometimes, we may meet with someone and it’s not a good fit if there’s not trust there and if there’s not the ability to say, “I’m coming in for help.” Some people do come in and they’re a little bit defensive, which is understandable. And our goal is to try and peel some of that off, but if we can’t do that…

 

Derek Gregoire: It’s not worth it.

 

Laura Russo: It’s not, yeah.

 

Derek Gregoire: We’re always talking about like, if you’re not comfortable, it’s not worth it. It’s not worth coming on board. Just we don’t want it because it is stressful for us to feel like someone’s not comfortable with the situations. I totally get that. It doesn’t happen often, but if it does…

 

Laura Russo: Yeah, not often at all.

 

Derek Gregoire: We’re always up front to deal with it. I’d rather have the awkward conversation than make it trying to fit a square peg in a round hole, something like that. And I think building that rapport is huge, and a lot of times, they’re coming from their friends who work for us, and a lot of times, too, we’re dealing with these, as you both know, Natalia, how many families do work with their children now?

 

Natalia Camargo: Exactly, yeah.

 

Derek Gregoire: Because they’re trying to get their kids learning about investing, or sometimes, their kids have plenty of money. Sometimes they’re just learning and starting out and we want to make sure we fill that goal to help teach their kids and connect them to money and learn basic strategies to build their worth. So, this is all great. When I think about, like myself, keep in mind I have a touch of OCD, so I like to have things in order. Surprised, just a tinge of it.

 

So, when I think about that, I’m always like, if I was not an advisor and we didn’t have this practice and I was just someone that needed to work their regular job and went to a financial advisor, even though small companies can be good or even a wirehouse can be good, I’d always be wondering is every I will be dotted, every T be crossed. I don’t want to be on a beach or golfing somewhere and wondering, oh shoot, I feel like someone’s managing my money, but are they really doing everything they can in my situation? You know what I mean?

 

And so, that’s the difference here at SHP. I mean, the thing, it’d be very difficult, I don’t know how we’ll be able to go back to not having a team approach of everything that’s being done behind the scenes. And so, for us, like I said, our clients know that the three of us all know the situation. We’re all working on their plans.

 

By the way, there is 45, 50 people at SHP that we can rely on as well for, like you’re going through our planning team for tax strategies and income strategies. You’re going to talk to our CPA and attorney all the time for strategies around that. We talk to our portfolio team about trading strategies and investment strategies.

 

So, even behind, it’s not just our team, it’s like there’s a whole team behind our team. But that’s what I think people, folks out there that have worked so hard, they deserve that. It’s like if you want, if you’re sitting there and you’re like, yeah, that resonates to me. I’m sitting here and if you look at, think of it like a– I wish we have cameras on, but think of a pizza, a pie with five different areas. One area is income planning, one is investments, one is taxes, one is health care, one is legacy. If all you’re getting is an investment plan, that’s one-fifth of a plan.

 

So, if you look at our clients that we meet with in retirement, a lot of the planning we do on reviews is we talk about performance, that might be what? Five minutes? And the other hour and a half is on planning, taxes, RMD strategies to qualify charitable distributions, like everything but performance. So, just being my OCD part, I was like, I’d hate to have a partial plan. If I work my butt off and I retired, I want to make sure everything is covered, not just one-fifth of what could…

 

So, last thing I want to do is kind of flip to something that we’ve dealt with a little bit recently, which is the tough part about this business, but people pass away. It’s part of life, obviously, and it’s a very tough issue. Laura and I just had one recently. We were in a meeting. And I think that’s kind of the true colors of what teamwork really does to see these people going through such a hard time, they know we have their back and then we’re doing everything we can on the financial side to take care as much as we can off their plate and the trust is there. You know what I mean, Laura?

 

Laura Russo: Exactly. I would say that is a huge difference between SHP and a lot of the other firms out there is that when someone walks in dealing with a situation where a loved one has passed away, sometimes they may run into a situation where they have a bit of that abrasive approach or, okay, well, we can transfer your funds here, here, and here, let us know. You make the decision.

 

Derek Gregoire: Yeah. Like what?

 

Laura Russo: As opposed to when you come in to SHP, I mean, I’m not going to lie, we were tearing up. It was hard because, again, they’re like SHP family to us. But our goal is to really be able to be the ones that moderate and to help as much as possible when it comes to estate administration. And it’s an extremely complex, difficult situation. And to not only have to deal with that, but also to grieve a loved one, that is just a horrible place to be. And so, we try to really take as much of that burden off of our clients so that they can focus their time on grieving and healing because that’s what’s more important in that time frame.

 

Derek Gregoire: Definitely.

 

Laura Russo: So, it’s a huge process, but we stand between every single stage from the first meeting on to making sure all the accounts are updated, making sure that everything is in the proper place and tax-wise. And it’s a huge help for our clients to know that they have that safety net there of SHP to be able to hold their hand and do it. And I would say that is my background in working in a large bank, one of the top five banks of the world.

 

It was a completely different situation where there was a team approach, but every team was extremely competitive and it was cutthroat and people would leave all the time. And you might have someone who was an expert in this client and then they quit because it’s not a great culture to work in. I would say, I’ve been here five years, I haven’t seen a lot of people leave, in all honesty. And I think we have a great medium right now. I think we’re in the perfect spot because a mom-and-pop shop, that’s hard. And you were there for a long time where you can’t do everything. You have piles and piles on your desk and you’re just trying to stay above.

 

Derek Gregoire: You’re reactive instead of proactive.

 

Laura Russo: But then when you go to these large firms and you have these teams, you are on team approaches, well, it’s too big, it’s unsustainable. People are competitive. People are trying to get promoted.

 

Natalia Camargo: Yeah, like you said, it’s not really a team. It’s like who can do more, who can produce more.

 

Laura Russo: Exactly, exactly. So, I think we found a really sweet spot, and I think I can probably speak for all of us, but our team is like, we’re our little family. We have a text message group that we text each other encouraging things.

 

Derek Gregoire: Team Awesome.

 

Laura Russo: We have Team Awesome, yes. But it’s funny, sometimes Natalia and I, we sit next to each other and I swear, people probably look at us like we’re crazy because we can just pick up on any type of topic. We’ll talk about the most random stuff. But also, it’s like we have a client that she’s working on, she can just start talking about it randomly and I’ll be right…

 

Natalia Camargo: She’ll know what we’re talking about.

 

Laura Russo: I will know exactly what we’re talking about. So, someone from the outside might think what is going on in that corner, but it’s because we have such a great rapport and there’s no competition between us. I want to see Natalia thrive. I want to see Derek thrive. And I know they want to see me thrive, which is a really great place to be.

 

Derek Gregoire: Yeah, thanks. And I think the other thing too, about going back to when a client passes away is like, I also think just all the stuff they had to deal with, imagine that someone wasn’t really there or too busy to support them through that, right? At least they know that the financial end is being taken care of.

 

And also, a lot of times, we have a lot of clients that know how to manage money, and pretty large clients, too, and they said, “You know what, Derek, Laura, and Natalia, I could probably do some of this myself, at least the investment side. But I want to make sure if something happens to me, I want to make sure my wife…”

 

Natalia Camargo: My wife is taken care of.

 

Derek Gregoire: Sometimes the wife is the one that does it, sometimes the husband. It’s not always the husband or wife. They want to make sure if something happens to them because that’s a vulnerable situation, if someone passes away and the wife took care of everything and the husband didn’t, and now, he’s like, what do I do, he can go to anyone not knowing what’s best and what’s not. So, I think the comfort of those families, peace of mind, knowing that they have someone, obviously, we’re not perfect, we make mistakes, we own it, we’re not going to do everything, we’re not going to pick every stock at the low and sell at the high. It’s just, we’re not a perfect company.

 

But my dad taught me, like I said a million times, whether it’s life, business, and what we do here, if you can take care of a lot of the little things and the details, then the bigger things work themselves out. And so, we always pay attention to the details, the small stuff in a plan for a client, in our communication, the way we treat people. And that, so far, has led to good success for Team Derek and especially SHP. So, thank you as always, both you, for everything you do for us and all of that. I know you guys, two of the hardest workers you ever meet and the nicest people you ever meet. Well, Laura, sometimes. Laura can be a little…

 

Laura Russo: You’re going to pay for that later.

 

Derek Gregoire: But anything final, anything else you need to get off your chest that’s not going to be at my dispense?

 

Natalia Camargo: No, I mean, one thing that I did want to add was that we’re not cookie cutter. I think you find that in bigger wirehouses that it’s like, okay, this isn’t for everyone. With us, we get to know our clients, and really, each situation is different.

 

Derek Gregoire: It sounds almost like a sales thing, but if you come into a first meeting, we tell them like, unless you’re dead serious about this, we don’t really want to put in the work because we’re not just hitting a button that everyone gets the same plan. Everyone’s so different. So, if we take on a referral or a new client, it’s not like, we hit a button and their plan comes up. Unfortunately, yeah…

 

Laura Russo: That’d be great.

 

Derek Gregoire: It’s not clear cut. It’s a great point, Natalia. So, we want to make sure if we’re going to take on a new client, we promise to our team and to our clients, we’re not going to waste time. So, we said, yes, if we can help them, we’ll be honest. But we said we don’t want to put the work in unless you’re very committed to moving forward because it’s time off our team, for ourself, and the person that’s looking into our services. So, awesome point on that. Anything else on your end, Laura?

 

Laura Russo: No, I think just the fact that it’s great to be open and to show people how our team works, and this isn’t just limited to Derek’s team.

 

Derek Gregoire: Oh yeah, that’s a good point.

 

Laura Russo: Yeah, this is how we’ve structured our entire company across the board. So, it’s pretty cool to know.

 

Derek Gregoire: Team Matt, Team Joe, Team Pat, Team Mark, Team Keith, Brian. There’s Chase. There’s multiple teams like these, and then all those teams like yourself. Actually, after this podcast, we have a meeting where all the team leads and advisors are meeting on best practices to share ideas. So, it’s a whole structure, not just us three here. So, awesome.

 

Natalia Camargo: Teams within teams within teams.

 

Derek Gregoire: Exactly. Well, thanks again. Hopefully, everyone enjoyed kind of a little bit behind the scenes look at SHP and Team Derek, but there’s so much. If your team meets you up to a meeting or any of us, just know that it makes us look great because of all the work that shows up. But so much of that, if not, 98% was done behind the scenes by the team. But as I say, teamwork makes the dream work. Thank you so much for listening. And we’ll catch you on a future episode very soon. Take care.

 

Natalia Camargo: Thank you.


The content presented is for informational purposes only and is not intended as offering financial, tax, or legal advice, and should not be considered a solicitation for the purchase or sale of any security. Some of the informational content presented was prepared and provided by tMedia, LLC, while other content presented may be from outside sources believed to be providing accurate information. Regardless of source no representations or warranties as to the completeness or accuracy of any information presented is implied. tMedia, LLC is not affiliated with the Advisor, Advisor’s RIA, Broker-Dealer, or any state or SEC registered investment advisory firm. Before making any decisions you should consult a tax or legal professional to discuss your personal situation.Investment Advisory Services are offered through SHP Wealth Management LLC., an SEC registered investment advisor. Insurance sales are offered through SHP Financial, LLC. These are separate entities, Matthew Chapman Peck, CFP®, CIMA®, Derek Louis Gregoire, and Keith Winslow Ellis Jr. are independent licensed insurance agents, and Owners/Partners of an insurance agency, SHP Financial, LLC.. In addition, other supervised persons of SHP Wealth Management, LLC. are independent licensed insurance agents of SHP Financial, LLC. No statements made shall constitute tax, legal or accounting advice. You should consult your own legal or tax professional before investing. Both SHP Wealth Management, LLC. and SHP Financial, LLC. will offer clients advice and/or products from each entity. No client is under any obligation to purchase any insurance product.
Was this information helpful? Should we publish more like this?
YesNo