Brad Johnson: Welcome back to another episode of Do Business, Do Life. Excited for today. We have Thomas Kopelman here with us today. Welcome to the show, Thomas.
Thomas Kopelman: Thank you. I’m excited. I remember listening to your show, I don’t know, a while back and just learning a lot from it. And I was telling you about this before but I’m a big fan of James Conole and loved that episode as well.
Brad Johnson: Well, of my first show, while we were just reminiscing, I’m like, “Man, you’re only 28. You’re off to a quick start in finance.” I think my first show probably started when you were still in high school, so I don’t know if you were geeking out on finance back then or not but, yeah, I appreciate it.
Thomas Kopelman: What was the name of your last show? You had a different show before this, right?
Brad Johnson: The Elite Advisor Blueprint was my first show. I started that in 2015.
Thomas Kopelman: Yes. That was one of the first ever. Like, when I started in the industry, I was like, you know, I started somewhere I didn’t have a lot of learning and I was like, “I am going to just consume as much content as I possibly can while you’re trying to figure out clients.” And it was one of the very first podcasts I binged as many episodes as possible, so that was a good one.
Brad Johnson: Well, cool. It’s since been retired off the internet. I did that when I was an employee, and then as we parted ways with my prior employer, it was time to do a reset for chapter two. So, there were some great episodes there, though. There were some really, really fun ones. And that was where I was just jumping in, get my feet wet. So, hopefully, I’ve learned a bit and they’ve continued to get better. But today, I want to talk about you, not about me. I know Sara Baker, President of Triad Wealth, made the introduction. I was aware of you. I don’t know when I started following you on Twitter or now X.com, but it was a while ago. So, I had heard the name but I’d never met the person. How did you and Sara connect? I never put that together.
Thomas Kopelman: I don’t go to very many conferences, but every one I go to, she’s there. And I think she knew the Wealth.com people and I’m their Head of Community like a Dasarte at Altruist. So, like I think we got introduced that way and I think we just kind of really hit it off. She’s some very intelligent person.
Brad Johnson: Yeah, and an incredible networker. I feel like she knows everybody in finance. Right? Actually, she was the one that introduced me to Tim White at Wealth.com. So, yeah, small world.
Thomas Kopelman: Tim’s a good dude.
Brad Johnson: Yeah. Well, okay, so for those unfamiliar with you, I’m going to kind of set the stage and then we’ll just let this thing go wherever it goes. Like I said, you’re 28. You got into the business when you were like really started your own firm at 25, so only three years ago. But what’s crazy is you’ve already grown a pretty substantial firm that’s very unique in its approach. And we’ll get into the fee-based approach that you have. But the other thing that’s really unique is almost 100% of your business is driven through what used to be Twitter is now X.com. I’m not making that up, right?
Thomas Kopelman: No. It’s probably like 97% I would say like we do get referrals. The problem is the way that we’ve grown and the type of clients we’ve grown into, a lot of the people in their circle are not in their same financial situation. So, they’ll refer us to friends who are just not quite the right fit. And so, we help them get to the right firm for them but, yeah, it’s really all Twitter and then some referrals.
Brad Johnson: It’s still hard to say X.com, isn’t it? Like, I always just want to say Twitter.
Thomas Kopelman: Yeah, I call it Twitter. I’m not changing.
Brad Johnson: You’re like now you’re starting to get old if you’re doing that like I’m calling it back what it was called back in my day.
Thomas Kopelman: That’s right. I didn’t think about it that way. I thought of it more as just I like the name and I’m used to it. Not that I’m going to be like the person who people are like, “What the heck is Twitter? What are you talking about?” down the line because I’m old.
Brad Johnson: Be careful as you get older. I just turned 44 and we have quite a few 20-year-olds that are here at Triad, and there’s definitely I’m realizing I’m getting old because they know none of my movie references, none of my music. And so, there’s definitely gaps that start to happen as you get older.
Thomas Kopelman: That’s so funny.
Brad Johnson: Let’s go back to I know you were a college athlete, played basketball. One of the things I’ve seen is that kind of athletic competitiveness and drive and willing to work hard translates really well into finance. I was a college athlete, a lot that I’ve seen that have been successful in this space. I’m not saying it’s required, but I do think the skill set translates. So, maybe we start with young Thomas. You’re kind of going through the college athletic journey. And then what led you into finance?
Thomas Kopelman: Yeah. I think even like a step further back is like I went through this period where I fell in love with basketball. And the thing about me was like you ask anybody who knew me then, like, I worked harder than anybody else. Like, I spent 2 to 3 hours shooting every day. I’d go to lift. My dad would come rebound for me. And like, what that really taught me is I think a lot of people when they go through their life, they see something that’s like unattainable. And I think what basketball taught me is that like if I control what I do, I can get to the place that I really want to get to. And I’m not saying like I obviously didn’t go to Duke or one of the best basketball schools, but I had my high school record and pretty much every single statistic.
I had D1 and I had D2 offers. I went and played in Minnesota State, got hurt. So, I didn’t really want to play anymore. Went to Butler, had a chance to walk on, decided I didn’t really want to do that and go back to basketball. But I do agree with you. I think what that taught me was just really putting in the work, right? And if you focus on the actions, results come in and it takes time. So, I think that was a really big thing for me. When I stopped, I did some personal training and I did a bunch of internships and all this. And like the personal training I did, I felt good about like I’m helping people, like I feel the impact of that. But then I did a bunch of other I did six internships in college.
You know, the biggest one was Eli Lilly. I did two at a consulting, I did like an insurance firm, I did a startup, and I hated all of them like I really did. I was like, I just don’t really want to work. This sucks. And I think that the reason was, is that like I was in the stage where like you do something, you pass it on. Whatever happens, happens like you don’t really get to move up until you hit X number of years. Like, the tangible feel like for the actions you put in the work you put in, you don’t really feel like how that helps somebody else. And unluckily I ended up at a broker dealer, but luckily I ended up in the industry, right?
And so, I think I finally found an area that was like, okay, well, the actions I take have impact and the harder I work and the more that I do, the more impact I can have, the more that can benefit me in my life. And that wasn’t the right place to be but this was the right industry for the way that my mind works.
Brad Johnson: I relate to that a lot. My first job was at Payless ShoeSource corporate office in Topeka. And I remember just the feeling like you’re playing a game of politics because there are so many levels and it’s like, well, I could just kick ass here, but at the end of the day, I’ve got to kind of like play the political ladder to climb. And that’s just not how I’m wired. I’m like put the work in, see the results. And that’s one of the things I love about finance. Most firms, unless you go to large corporations and finance, it’s kind of you get what you give. So, you start this BD. This is about how old? 22, 23? Like, how old were you?
Thomas Kopelman: 22.
Brad Johnson: 22.
Thomas Kopelman: Yeah. I think I graduated and that first week I took like the health exams, right? And I really didn’t know what I was getting into. All I knew is my grandma is pretty well-off. She started a business with like $500, grew a business, was very successful, and she benefited our whole family like she paid for our college. We got to go on like, you know, she take us on a vacation every year if we wanted to, every five years for the anniversary. We do big trips. And a lot of that came from having a good financial advisor who helped her invest and do good things with her money. So, like that’s one of my early things. I just remember my parents talking about them and like the lake around Wisconsin that we’d go to, their financial advisor had a great house. And he was a good guy.
And so, I didn’t really have the like bad taste in my mouth about financial advisors that I think a lot of other people did but I also didn’t know what the job entailed in any way. And obviously, anybody who’s been in broker dealer life, that’s not really what true financial planning looks like. I think I got a foot in the door, and what I did is I went outside of my company. My company was very big of like, “All the mentors you need are here and you can learn everything you need from us.” And that was not true. I wasn’t learning any of the things that I needed to learn other than permanent life insurance and how to try to get your cousin to buy something from you. And I took this step outside of that, right? And, obviously, it’s not all broker dealers, but some of the bad captive ones…
Brad Johnson: Well, I mean, I’ll say right there. The dirty little secret in finance, as I now look back, is a lot of times it’s kind of here’s the young college age kid that’s used to living on $2,000 a year or whatever. Okay, bring them right into finance. And now they’re kind of in this captive organization where it’s called grandma, your aunt, your uncles. And it’s basically using the family network effect to kind of get assets. And then what? I don’t know the statistics, but I feel like it’s one out of every 50…
Thomas Kopelman: It’s 80% fail.
…who makes it. Yeah. And so, basically, all of these assets just roll up. What were your thoughts there on stats?
Thomas Kopelman: Yeah. They said 80% of financial advisors fail there. And then they don’t think it’s a training issue. They think it’s a people issue. And it’s like, no, that’s just obviously it’s an issue here of the way things are done, right? Like, nobody wants to be sold things. People want to be taught things and helped understand how to do the right things with their money. And so, obviously, that was the big problem for me coming in is like instantly I knew this was not the right thing or the right place but I can stay there as long as I needed to until I found the right avenue because I think, you know, and I don’t want to hate on the captive insurance places too much, but I also want to be realistic.
Like, the last two years I’ve done way less one-on-ones with advisors. I do have, on office hours, that on average 40 to 50 advisors come to. There’s 400 plus, maybe 500 advisors on my list now, and I did over 400 one-on-ones with advisors. 75% came from captive insurance agencies. Everyone had the same story. So, let’s not pretend there aren’t good advisors there but let’s also not pretend that most of it is not being taught the right way. You can still have good people in bad areas, but still not really the best environment.
Brad Johnson: I kind of call it the Church of Finance. I’ve seen this, I don’t know how many, hundreds or thousands of hours at this point. I’ve done coaching advisors over the last two decades, but you are very much a product of kind of the school that you grew up in, and it’s almost like there’s these different religions in finance whether it’s insurance focus, fee-only focus, and there’s all, you know, I can’t even name them all. But I think at the end of the day, the most successful advisors, agents, they’re people focused. They’re like, “Hey, I want to help this person. I don’t want to just sell them a product and move on.”
Thomas Kopelman: Absolutely.
Brad Johnson: And I find that to be pretty true. So, let’s jump. We were kind of doing a pre-conversation before we hit record. So, young Thomas enters the BD world, starts learning some things. And then it wasn’t too long thereafter you connected with Russ Ford and Justin Castelli as really kind of call it your first mentors. Is that a fair statement?
Thomas Kopelman: Totally. So, what happened is Russ Ford’s local to me. Good advisor. I saw his website somehow and the website was all about like, “I’m not here to sell you anything. I’m here to be think like friend across the table. Like, you can bring your kids into the meeting, like put your guard down. I’m not going to be a student tie type person. We’re just going to be like we’re two friends and I’m here to help you and I care about you.” And his website spoke to that. And I was like, “That is exactly what I’m feeling like I want to do.” And I was at a random conference in some small thing in Indy, and I was like, “Wait, that’s him.” I ran up to him and I was like, “Hey, are you Russ Ford?”
And he was like, “Yes.” I was like, “Oh my gosh, saw your website. Love it. I would love to build something like yours. Would you meet with me on a one-on-one?” And he really kind of took me under his wing. We probably did about every month for a while. And he really helped teach me about financial planning. He left MassMutual. So, he kind of had a similar background. He went to Butler like I did. So, we had a lot of similarities, and he wasn’t hiring really at a point. And he connected me to Justin Castelli. And so, I went to like an XY planning type local event where they were both at. And I got to know Justin well, and I was like, “Justin, please hire me.” And he was like, “I’m not hiring anybody. Like, I don’t want any advisors. That was never my plan.”
I met with him again. I was like, “Just hire me. Like, I’ll take no money.” I literally said, “Pay me $2,000 a month as I learn and grow. I don’t need a lot of money. I just want the opportunity to learn.” And I think after like 4 or 5 meetings, I pushed him enough that he was like, “You know what? I kind of had this feel that like when I meet somebody really good and there the opportunity, I’m going to give it to him.” And so, he hired me and it was perfect for me because I wasn’t really the person who wanted like follow every guideline and here’s what you do and here’s this. He was kind of more of like the nudge you in the right direction type person. Like, I’m here and I’m learning things. I’m like, “Oh, what about this? Great. I’ll push you and I’ll help you do that.”
And we got to a point where I learned so much from him but we were also like it was during COVID. I was at home. He was at the office. You know, we didn’t have to talk very much and he was like, “I feel so much guilt.” He’s like, “I feel like I’m not doing anything right now, and honestly, like for my own peace of mind and also, I think you’re ready to start your own firm. Go do it.” So, I’m like in his office, no prep. I never want to be a business owner. I just want to serve clients, not have to worry about anything. And he’s like, “No, you’re doing this.” And I was like, “Oh my gosh.”
Brad Johnson: Wow.
Thomas Kopelman: Okay. And he told me the first day I started that, “I see a lot of you and me, and I know you’re going to want to be a business owner, and you’re meant to be one.” And I was like, “Nope, never thought about it. Never once in my mind was that what I wanted to do.” And he pushed me to do it like I owned my podcast, like I owned everything that was mine. He always had me set up my own website. So, like, it was kind of a nice little transition into being able to start and again, like he was there. If I ever had any questions, he was there. And one good thing about starting on social and stuff is I build a good network of advisors that when you launch your own firm, there’s going to be a million things you don’t know how to do but if you know the person who can solve that problem or who you can go to, it is actually a lot more manageable than people think.
Brad Johnson: Well, there’s a couple lessons there. Number one, I think there’s a lesson in leadership from Justin, and I want to circle back to that. But the first thing that created that was you were willing to ask for help, which means you take your ego and you reduce that so you can ask for help. But there are so many young people. And if you’re listening in to this conversation, I will say most people in finance that I’ve met, if you simply ask for help and you’re a humble student, you will be blown away by how many people come out of the woodwork. So, where did that come from for you, Thomas? Were you brought up that way, where your dad’s like, “Seek mentorship”? Did you stumble across that yourself? What led to you pursuing that?
Thomas Kopelman: I think that was kind of just how I always was with like basketball, honestly, of like finding good people who can help coach and mentor and push you in the right direction. But I don’t know if it was actually a skill or something I was used to doing until I got to here, and I don’t really know when I became comfortable with it. I guess in my mind I didn’t really see it as an ego thing that I was dropping my ego to ask to help. I felt like it was just that I had a lot to learn. And most people had been in my shoes and they were willing to help just like I’m willing to help other people answer questions or do other things. I think it just came natural to feel like, yeah, I guess I didn’t really know as much that the industry normally isn’t like that, right?
Like, again, in my first firm, if you ask me for help, they’re getting revenue from the client, right? Like, fine, I’ll come and I’ll do it but I’m getting 50% of the revenue, right? That’s how every single thing was. But I also think the point about Justin’s really, really important too because my first company when I left yelled at me. They got mad. They did all these things. Not one of them has ever talked to me one time. They never liked a LinkedIn post, a Twitter post. They’ve never once interacted with me. When Justin and I left, it was like he was pushing me for me to do what was best for me. And there they didn’t even think about anybody but them. And I think that was very telling.
Brad Johnson: Well, a parting thought on just the asking for help or connecting with others, I remember, I was in my 30s, so it’s probably ten years ago or so, almost ten years ago. We brought in Joey Coleman at my prior employer to speak. Actually, it’s funny. His book is sitting here right in front of me. So, he just wrote Never Lose an Employee Again and prior to that, Never Lose a Customer Again. Both awesome books, incredible speaker. But we were having dinner one time, and I remember him saying, “You know, as a speaker, there is no greater compliment than when you finish up and you share a message that somebody comes up to the stage and says, ‘Thank you. Like, that really hit home with me. That thing you shared, like I’m going to use that.’”
And he said, “You’ll be blown away.” He’s like, “I’ve spoken to rooms with thousands of people and there might be three people that come up at the end because it’s kind of this intimidation thing or I don’t want to bother them thing.” And that story just always stuck with me from my experience because I’ve been on stage as I’ve been on podcasts, if somebody reaches out and like, “Dude, that thing you shared really meant something and it changed how I thought,” like there’s no greater compliment. So, I just think there’s this fear of the unknown or maybe intimidation thing that gets in people’s way. And it sounds like you never really had that. You were just the guy walking right up and introducing yourself to Russ Ford as a random stranger at a conference.
Thomas Kopelman: Yeah. I mean, I guess it didn’t really cross my mind in that way. And luckily now looking back, I’m glad that that was, you know, I think that was like everybody kind of has that one pivotal moment that kind of pushes you and changes you. And I think that was really important because I think a lot of people in my shoes that thrive into where I was at would be like any job offer, give me, out and go. And I didn’t do that. I spent a lot of time. I had, I think, 7 or 8 offers before I was like getting paid four to five times what I made with Justin but I knew Justin would be the best stepping stone in my career, and that would get me to the best place long term versus junior advisor at a corporate place. Like, we talked about this really how my mind works like that was not going to be the place that would foster me to be the best that I could be.
Brad Johnson: Yeah. And such a lesson in leadership there because I have seen and heard the experience you talked about where they’re kind of like, “You’re dead to us if you’re not working for us.” And the best leaders I’ve ever in my life come across is those that realize there are seasons, and you’ll have a great team member on your team, and sometimes they outgrow the business. And if part of leadership is growing other leaders and wishing them well, what I think oftentimes is missed is it’s almost like right now. We’re talking about Justin and how awesome he is. So, Justin like helped grow an entrepreneur, planted a seed out there. And because of the way he handled it and wished you well, now you’re an advocate for him and his work versus saying, “Oh, that guy sucked. He tried to like hold me back.”
And it’s so common, your first experience in finance where people are like there’s just this bitterness. And I think it goes back to ego again of like, do you think like Thomas was an indentured servant that was going to serve here until the day he died? Unfortunately, that’s not how it works today. So, do you have any other thoughts of like your side of that and how that’s impacted your leadership now as you grow a team with just the lesson from kind of growing up under Justin?
Thomas Kopelman: I think between the two what I learned is like, so now I’m building AllStreet, right? I have two full-time people around me and my client base. And like the one thing that I’ve learned through that and kind of watching my wife and her roles and their things is like the best thing that I can do now as a leader is create a work environment that people never want to leave. And if I’m in their shoes, what would I want? Like, I would want to be rewarded for the growth of the firm, even though that might not be them who’s generating the new people. Like, I want to give them unlimited days off. I want to give them work the hours that you need to work as long as the work gets done.
And I think if I hire people similar to me, if you give them freedom, you’ll actually get the best out of them. And I know that’s not doable in every single role and with every type of person that you work with but what I found is if I find the right people, “Here’s the overall thing you need to do. Go figure out how to do this better than I could do it,” has made us really, really good at what we do.
Brad Johnson: Awesome. All right. Let’s shift. Because we already teased it, that I think you said 97% of your current flow of new assets is coming through. We’ll just call it Twitter. I feel more comfortable calling it Twitter too.
Thomas Kopelman: Thank you.
Brad Johnson: So, we’ll go old school. We’ll call it Twitter today. So, we were talking and I know you’re familiar with Dave Zoller, James Conole. As I look at this young generation of advisors, obviously, we have tools today we didn’t have when I got in the business in ’07. And that is, like social media existed but it didn’t exist with the reach and I believe all of the different tool sets that we have today. And so, let’s start just on the sheer marketing front because I look at it, there’s a funnel here. And the cool thing is you can post on Twitter and now I’m looking here, you’re currently at let me go back. I dove in on one of your posts.
Thomas Kopelman: It’s probably like…
Brad Johnson: 28,600 followers on Twitter. And so, now you’ve started to establish reach. You post very consistently. I was following you before we ever met and it’s good content, so that’s key. But let’s talk about how Twitter became a marketing funnel for you and what you’ve learned along that journey.
Thomas Kopelman: Yeah. So, there’s a big reason I actually left Thrivent is that I couldn’t do social media. And I was like, “Okay. If I look across any service space industry, you’re going to find the best people from social because you get to vet them and their intelligence.” Right? If you’re hiring me for my brain, you should know how I think, how I talk, and the knowledge base that I have. And everybody’s like, “Oh my gosh. Like, if I get people do a webinar, I get people this in-person event, that is such a good way to get clients.” But what if I can basically do that multiple times a day, every single day, so I can hit people with information potentially thousands of times a year, right? Like, when you think about it that way, you start to understand why it’s really powerful.
And so, for me, I first started only on LinkedIn because that’s what everybody said, right? LinkedIn is for clients. Twitter is for connecting with other advisors. I listen to that for maybe a year or so. And I was like, “This is so dumb. I’m learning from experts on Twitter and real estate as CPAs, as lawyers.” Why would I not – like if that’s how I use this platform, because when I use LinkedIn, I basically am just scrolling and like you engage to engage because that’s what you’re supposed to do. But like people aren’t generally asking questions or going deeper into a topic there. And I realized that people were on Twitter and that’s why I like to be. And I was trying to work with people similar to me, business owners, high income people, scaling businesses, etcetera.
And so, I started on Twitter, I started creating, and I remember an advisor reaching out to me. He’s like, “Dude, your Twitter sucks. You talk way too much about personal finance.” And I was like, “Yeah, that’s what I’m trying to do.” And he’s like, “Nobody wants to read your personal finance stuff here on Twitter.” I looked at his last tweet and it was about his fridge. He was talking about how annoying his fridge door was, and I’m like, “Okay. I think they don’t want to listen to what you’re talking about is actually what I see.” And so, I’ve just gone down this lane. And actually, this really reaffirming thing a couple weeks ago is people always are like, “You don’t talk that much about your personal life.” And I weave in like Duke and the Bears and things as I do that but like I’m not just going to fake put things out to just post about it.
And Justin Welsh who everybody loves on social media. Somebody I saw, he was like, “Hey, leave a comment on here. I’ll review your profile if you want me to and I’ll give you advice.” Somebody left it. He went to their page. He goes, “Four of your last five tweets are about baseball. Nobody cares about what you think about baseball if you’re trying to get people to want to work with you.” And I was like, “Thank you. Like, this is the belief that I’ve had for 3 or 4 years.” And so, like my whole approach here is that I think people look at marketing wrong in our industry and they think marketing is like Nike, right? Like, we put out ads and like Just Do It and like people are going to have brand awareness and they’re going to buy your shoes. Not it, right? People want to work with people.
They don’t care if I’m at AllStreet Wealth, if I’m at RLS Wealth with Justin, if I go to Triad. Where I go, they want to work with me. And so, what marketing is for me is personal branding. All I’m trying to do is show I’m a subject matter expert. I can solve their unique problems. I explain things in the way that they understand. That’s it. And if I do that for long enough, once they hit that pain point where they need somebody, they’re going to reach out to me, right? So, hey, my business is I’m doing pretty well. Oh, all of a sudden, I’m making $1 million a year in my business. I do need to hire help. I need to make sure I’m making the right decisions. Who’s the one advisor who has never asked anything from me, but has educated me for years about things nobody else has talked about? That’s the person they’re going to go book a meeting with. And all I’ve done head down is focus on that approach, and it’s worked really well.
Brad Johnson: So, we’re going to make sure in the show notes, we’ll put a link to your Twitter profile. As I just scroll here, I mean, the one you have pinned at the top, it’s very… I’m just going to read it here so those that are listening in can kind of get some context. “I have clients making close to 1 million a year as a W-2 employee taking the standard deduction. Then I have business owners making one-fourth of that with hundreds of thousands in deductions. The tax code is built different for owners. Here are 11 of the best tax planning moves for business owners.” And then basically you start a thread where you’re naming one through 11. That post was June 7th, 598,000 views, 54 comments, 169 retweets, 1.6K likes, 2.9K bookmarks.
So, let’s rewind because most people that have been on Twitter, been on Twitter for a long time and never had a tweet do anything like that. Here has been my experience, and I want to kind of unpack your journey on building this. Our industry and finance advisors is somewhat built on instant gratification, and that is you kind of hit some of those. But even like when you first get into it, it’s like, “Hey, call your warm network, call grandma, call grandpa, call aunts, uncles, get them in for an appointment, do business. Do the public mailer, do the dinner seminar, do the paid radio show. Do the paid TV show where you’re purchasing an audience.” And so, it’s kind of this instant gratification, spend money, get appointments, close deals. And social media does not work that way at all. It’s the long game.
So, give us like the, “I started with no followers. I kind of refined my strategy. I finally got some traction.” And then when did it actually turn into a real marketing funnel where you did business from Twitter like if you don’t mind kind of going through memory lane there?
Thomas Kopelman: Absolutely. You are absolutely right. It is not the slow, I mean, a fast way to get clients but it is a consistent way to get clients once you get that built. So, I would say I first started on Twitter with 800 followers. I think that’d be three years ago. I ended that year at, I mean this was two years ago, I ended up that year at about 7,500 followers.
Brad Johnson: So, real quick, can I ask a question there? Because most people, you start a Twitter profile, you have zero followers, and then there’s like five buddies that are also on Twitter. And so, then you kind of connect with them. But how did you go from 0 to 800?
Thomas Kopelman: I had a Twitter probably since I was like from 2010 maybe, so I think it was just…
Brad Johnson: So, you had some like high school friends, college friends sort of stuff.
Thomas Kopelman: It was just people I knew, really. It wasn’t like anybody to work with me. It was really just friends throughout life and stuff. So, I started at 800 in January. I think that’d be 2022. I ended that year at about 7,500 followers. And what I started doing there is once I decided that was a channel I wanted to go down, I think I did one thread a day, Monday through Friday for like a month, and that was a grind for me, but it helped get some traction, get some followers going. And I believe this is all a repetition game of learning how to write well, how to create hooks that get people interested in your content is obviously such an important part, right? Like, that’s the biggest thing most advisors missing is they basically just wrote an Investopedia article that you didn’t get anybody interested in, right?
Like, if you can’t get them to go to tweet 2, well, it doesn’t matter if you had great information in 2 to 30 in your thread, nobody is reading it. And you mentioned bookmarks. To me, bookmarks and the number of people who read the last tweet in your thread are the biggest telling sign of it’s good or not, because you’ll see people who have like a catchy hook and they get 100,000 views, but their last tweet had 20 people. What I like to look at is my best performing ones that have converted the most people at the end have 20,000 to 40,000 views on the 30 to 50th tweet, right? Like, if you’ve captured somebody that deep in a reading, they’re going to be interested in working with you over time, as long as they’re not a true DIYer, which some people are. And not everybody’s going to work with an advisor and it’s okay to educate people who aren’t going to work with you.
But I started there and I think in that year, I had already been doing LinkedIn for a year and a half, so I was okay at social. And I probably started to get a few prospects a month towards the end of the year. And then come Q1 of the next year, I was consistently getting seven-ish prospects a month. But at that time, those prospects were, “I make $200,000 a year, on our 30s and 40s,” like my model was $350 a month or something, was my top model. Then throughout that year, I started to grow quite a bit. I ended that year at, I think, a little over 15,000, probably like 16,000 or something. And by the end of the year, I was probably getting 14 prospects a month, similar to that.
Maybe we’re getting to the 300s. We’re starting to do quite a bit better, 300,000 to 500,000 of income, I would say. And then now, this year, I’ve gone from whatever that number was like 15 to now 28. And the average person who’s coming to work with us is making $1 million of income or more. I mean, we’ve gotten prospects in the 100 million net worth range. And so, it did take time. But I’ve also refined my content to go from more simple to more complex, right? I really figured out that I didn’t want to just work with millennials. I wanted to work with 30 to 40-year-old business owners that are netting seven figures in income. And so, not only did I change my marketing, but I was working with those clients. I built my team around working with those clients.
I had services, like at the start, I think Q3 of last year, my minimum model was 750 a month. Now, my minimum model is 1,000 a month and 1,500 a month. And everybody fits into one of those two. And then we also, in the last couple months, we started to actually say, “Okay, if you want to do AUM, we can do AUM.” And so, we went from 3 to about 15 million in the last two months. And I don’t care. I give everybody the choice. 12,000 is the minimum fee, 1,000 a month. If you have enough in assets at a 0.75% fee, you cross 12K, you can do that. If you don’t and you want any asset management, we charge 0.35% along the 12,000 a year fee, and then you can graduate. I don’t care what model you pick. We want to help you. Some people hate AUM, some people love AUM. We don’t care.
Brad Johnson: I want to make sure we go into that here in a second because you have one of the most unique rev models of any that I’ve ever crossed paths with in finance. And one thing that I love about it, though, I feel like you just removed friction. You’re like, hey, there’s friction here. Some people want me to manage their assets, some don’t. Some just want the advice. So, you kind of give them a fork in the road where, do you want to go right or go left? I don’t care but here’s the minimum that the firm needs to do the work we do. And it’s like super simple. It’s not complicated but there are some serious thought that went into it, I’m sure.
So, let’s put that on the shelf for a second. I want to revisit that and get your take. If we stick with Twitter as a marketing funnel, what I’ve noticed here and there will be some listening that are on Twitter all the time. There will be some that like I’ve maybe set up a profile and never gone back, but you mentioned your threads, which is basically where you have a tweet that links to another tweet that links to another tweet.
Thomas Kopelman: It’s like a blog post turned into a way to consume.
Brad Johnson: Yeah. That’s what I was about to go to, man. It’s really just a blog that’s shareable, likable, you can take little sections out, comment. So, I feel like it’s been like Twitter has a bit become the evolution of the blog that happened back in like the 90s, where that was a big thing. Do you feel the same?
Thomas Kopelman: And I do have a blog. Absolutely. I have a blog. And like, obviously, if you follow Samantha Russell, she’s a good friend of mine. Zero click content is important. So, I don’t try to drive people off platforms at all. I want to nurture them on the platform. So, all of my threads are blogs that I wrote before I turn it into a thread. And then if I have a good thread idea and I write as a thread, I turn it into a blog and I let it host there. So, when somebody says, “Oh, wait, Thomas, like what about back to a Roth?” so I’m like, “Here’s my blog about it. You can go to my website,” and then they have an application to work with us there. So, that way, it’s hard to search social to find your content.
So, all my best content is also on my website, so I can always drive them over to there. And then I repurpose a lot of those into weekly newsletters. Like, I am really, really, really big on repurposing. So, like maybe a month ago, what I do is I create a lot of content. I think short form content is how you stay active, stay relevant, keep people in your minds. Long form content is how you convert people to clients because anybody can Google qualified opportunity zone like we were talking about before and write three lines about it. How many people can go into the weeds, make it interesting, make it relevant, and make it like, “Here’s why this is really beneficial to you post a liquidity event.” And so, I think between podcast, YouTube, and long form writing, that is where you get people to say, “Yes, that’s the person that I want to work with.”
Brad Johnson: Let’s go into content creation because now we’re talking about it. So, if I look at how things go from in your brain to either on a website, on Twitter, on a podcast, I’ve just crossed a lot of paths with people. They do it differently. So, if I say this is your testing ground for new content, almost like you’re a standup comedian, where does the brain dump originally go and how does it get out of your brain onto wherever it goes first?
Thomas Kopelman: Yeah. So, here’s a mix. If it’s new content, any time I have a new idea, I throw it in Notion. So, I have just like lists of stuff like I am probably in January mapped out every blog post for the entire year. Like, it’s something that comes natural to me. So, I like do things there and then I basically just go write it in Word or like I use Hypefury, which is a scheduling tool where you can do threads and different stuff like that, but it’s like idea comes or I’m meeting with a client or whatever, great. Here’s an idea or a client story or something that can be really good. Throw it in Notion to remember that’s a topic. I am huge on scheduling, right?
The average advisor you talk to is like, “Oh, I started on social media and then fall reviews happened and then I stopped and I started again for a month and I stopped.” And it’s like you’re feeding like an algorithm, right? So, like as soon as you stop, if you were here, you’re back down. You have to build back to there. So, since I’ve been creating for five years, I’ve never had a time off like it doesn’t matter. I just schedule things. So, I got to the point where I go to the pool for an afternoon on a Friday and I’m going to sit out there for four hours, and I’m going to schedule 3 to 6 months of content in one sitting. Like, I’ve just gotten to the point where I look at all my old stuff and I’m like, “Oh, that’s good. I’ll use that,” or, “Ooh, that topic is good. I could rewrite this better.”
And then I’m in the middle of that like, “Oh, that gave me a new idea,” and I do that. And so, I schedule three posts every single day on Twitter naturally. And then like that’s separate from, “Ooh, I have a new blog,” or I have a new podcast or separate from. I do two threads a minimum a week. And then what ends up happening is I go through busy seasons, and then all of a sudden I’ll be like, “Oh, great, I don’t have that many reviews.” We always have a waitlist of clients. We’re very booked ahead but then I’ll be like, “Oh, this last month we didn’t get as many prospects. I have a little bit of free time. I’m going to go repurpose my best ones I’ve ever written.” So, that one you read, I have many variations of that advanced tax planning one. I posted that last month. I got 37 prospects after I posted it.
Brad Johnson: That one?
Thomas Kopelman: And that will feed me. Yeah, I did a new one and the new one has been…
Brad Johnson: Okay. So, man, my brain is going 17 different directions here. So, I got to slow you down, man, but this is gold. Okay. So, the one we’re looking at and we’ll put this in the show notes. So, this is I’m just scrolling up again. So, this is June 7th of 2023. We’re just over two months old as we record this, 37 prospects came through this post.
Thomas Kopelman: So, a newer version of that I posted a different hook based on business tax planning. I ended up getting, yeah, 37 prospects that month from it. And I’ll have to go back and look.
Brad Johnson: So, if this is a sale, I’m thinking of this very much through sales funnel now. So, you’re scrolling down and I have seen a trend now where a lot of the Twitter threads, it’s like, “Hey, if you like this, click here,” and that’s where they finally take them somewhere else. How do you take them from the post to I’m now engaging on your website or whatever your typical sales funnel is?
Thomas Kopelman: Yep. I don’t do that. I think it’s spammy where people push people or they’re like sign up for our newsletter after every post. I don’t do anything. You go to my profile, you click to my website, and you apply to work with us. I don’t spend any time DMing people. I don’t tell people to go work with me. I just let them be like, “Oh, this guy knows what he’s talking about. I should see if working with him makes sense.”
Brad Johnson: So, basically, I just click this. It is AllStreetWealth.com/Thomas. It takes me to a very clean website where it says schedule a call with me button right at the top. Little like kind of bio with some links in it, your newsletter, Check out YouTube, Here’s my podcast, and then a form as you scroll down, which looks like pretty probably about three minutes to fill that out, tops.
Thomas Kopelman: Yep. Because we want to vet people. I used to let people book on my calendar, and I don’t want to meet with any of the people who we know aren’t a good fit from the start. And so, we also highlight a minimum 12,000 fee, so we don’t have to spend any time with people who are like, “Ooh, we couldn’t pay that.”
Brad Johnson: Yeah. So, right under the button, so here I’m just going to run through it for those on audio, name, email address, location. What do you do for a living? If a business owner, please specify revenue and employee count. Current annual income. Current net worth. Desired service, which consists of financial planning plus ongoing, just financial plan, not sure yet. And then what has led you to looking for a financial planner? Please provide spouse, partner, or significant other, name, email. There in a big button, talk with AllStreet Wealth. Directly under that button, minimum pricing is 12K per year for ongoing financial planning. So, straight up, don’t click the button if you’re not interested in a minimum of 12K per year. Did you add that later because you were getting a lot of people that just weren’t qualified to work with or couldn’t afford you?
Thomas Kopelman: Yeah. I mean, so even beginning I have plenty of people who were like, “Oh, I would have known they weren’t a good fit.” They make $200,000 a year. 12,000 is obviously not a good fit or, “Hey, this is the retiree.” I don’t work with retirees. That’s not the audience I work with. And then I was like, then we have a couple people be like, “Ooh, 12,000?” I’m like, great. Well, then let’s just add it here because I want, you know, if you’re getting a good amount of prospects, I don’t want to waste any time. I just will refer them. Here’s a referral list of good advisors that you guys can go to. And so, we keep kind of refining that process. And now I can come prepared to the meeting. And I again listen to James’s episode. I do the same thing. We have one call. You choose to work with us in that one call or not. We don’t do the get your info…
Brad Johnson: How long is that first call?
Thomas Kopelman: 45 minutes.
Brad Johnson: 45 minutes via Zoom, I would assume.
Thomas Kopelman: Yeah. We do no in-person meetings or work with clients.
Brad Johnson: So, via Zoom 45 minutes, you’re kind of going. I mean what’s your deciding factor of like we move forward or we don’t?
Thomas Kopelman: So, honestly, because of that intake form, we know they’re vetted or not. So, it’s really, is this a good fit and do you want to work with us? I spend the first half of the meeting just getting to know them where they’re at, what they’re looking for, why now, what a good relationship looks like. Second half of the meeting, I take that exactly through what it looks like to work with us. Here’s what we’re going to do in between this meeting and the next. Here’s what we do the next meeting. Here’s what we do the next meeting. Here’s what a financial plan looks like. We go through a full sample of financial plan. Here’s what the meeting after that looks like. Here’s what it looks like after that. Quarterly review is here’s what we do in every meeting.
Here’s my team, here’s fees, here’s onboarding dates. And I would say 60% of the clients that sign on, which is probably about, you know, I’d say about 75% conversion, say yes in the meeting. Like, my last client who signed on two days ago, we are five minutes into the meeting, he’s, “I’m ready to go, man. We don’t really need to talk more about this. I’ve known I wanted to work with you. I’ve listened to all your podcasts. Let’s just get this going. When do I start? And what do I need to do?”
Brad Johnson: Okay. So, let’s rewind because I think that last little point you made is one of the, it’s the power of creating great content consistently is basic. And James Conole said the same thing. We’ll link to his episode in the show notes. He basically said they’ve almost bought before we even talk because they’ve been vetting you. They’ve been reading maybe for over a year before they finally decide to reach out, and that’s been the biggest disconnect I’ve seen back to short game instant gratification versus long game, what it actually took to build the reputation, consistently put out great content. Let’s just go to an imaginary world right now and let’s say you retire from being a financial advisor.
You’re just going to be a coach that coaches financial advisors, how to actually build a personal brand that drives business. If you were shooting me straight, Brad just comes to you today. I’m that advisor. And I’m like, “Hey, I have zero followers on Twitter. I’ve got some general ideas about finance. I’ve been doing it a while. I think I’ve met with clients, so I know the sort of questions they ask.” And you signed me up for Thomas’s bootcamp to build a platform that can actually drive business. What are you telling me right up front? How long do I need to commit to this? And what’s that bootcamp look like before you expect I might get my first appointment from it?
Thomas Kopelman: Yep. So, I would say, first and foremost, when you don’t have followers, that is your best time to put out the most amount of content you can and learn to become better because everybody’s like, “Oh, you write so well. You have good threads, like you have good hooks. How do you do it?” It’s like I’ve written probably 400 of them, right? Like, it’s a skill that you learn. I think people are like, “Oh, I’m bad at social.” It’s like, well, if you never played basketball and you go pick up the basketball, you’re not going to be in the NBA, right? You’re going to be playing on a middle school team, right? It takes time. Get the reps in. Don’t just assume that you’re bad at it.
So, I’d start with there. I’d say in the beginning, engaging with other people is the way you grow. So, going on to other accounts, leaving thoughtful comments like doing that type of thing is really, really important to grow but don’t be the good post. You know, like that’s just wasted comments like you’re not getting anything good out of that. A lot of my early growth did come from leaving a really thoughtful comment on maybe like a Ramit post or a Dave Ramsey idea or something like that. The other thing I would say is take one long form piece of content or type of content you like to do. People are always like, “Well, what’s the best one? Is it video? Is it this?” Doesn’t matter. If you don’t like it and you’re not going to be good at it, don’t do it because you’re going to give up on it before you get the results.
So, I think word has to be a part of it. And then that’s a podcast. It can be video, you know, it can be blogs and writing long threads. But I think you need the long form content to convert people. And then I would say come up with a schedule you can stick to, but understand the less often the schedule is, the longer this time frame is going to be. So, if you say I’m going to post two times a week, understand that’s going to take years because if we think about how social media works, let’s say you post twice a week, eight times a month, and the statistic I found is that about 25% of your audience sees each post. So, now everybody has seen about two posts a month, and maybe neither of them apply to their situation, right? So, like you really haven’t nurtured them or educated them into what they’re going through.
So, I think post more but it’s okay to start at like three. Like when I first started, I was like I’m going to do three posts a week and then it became five and then it became ten, and then it became 20. Then it became like 40. And it just becomes natural, right? I have all my scheduled stuff and then, “Oh, I left this meeting. I have a good idea. I have a good post. Let me go add in new content mixed in as well.”
Brad Johnson: All right. So, on that input, here’s what I’ve kind of picked up in the conversation. Wow. This client I just met with ask an interesting question about obscure tax rule, whatever. That’s going like straight from your brain into Notion like, “Hey, potential future post.” Where do the other inputs come from as far as input in before you go to output?
Thomas Kopelman: Like, how do I come up with the ideas?
Brad Johnson: Yeah. Where’s the content come from or the ideas of what I’m going to post on?
Thomas Kopelman: I just think it’s so easy. It’s just natural for me now because it’s like, okay, I’m working with all of these complex clients facing very similar problems. Everybody has very similar questions like, I think early on, my biggest concern was how am I to come up with new content in a year? A lot of really good content is talking about very similar things in different ways, over and over and over. It’s the Morgan Housel belief, right? He basically writes about like 5 to 7 things in a different way every single time. That’s all you need, right? Like, when you boil down to what personal finance is or running a business, well, it’s not that complex.
And what I tell people is like, go to cash, right? Can you come up with 20 different things that you talk about clients about cash? What about debt? What about investing? What about retirement planning? What about insurance planning? Like, yeah, we have ten plus topics of 20 plus posts that you can write in different ways. You can have list. You can do like the negative part of it. You can do the positive part of it. You can just restructure it. Then you can repost the one that was the best. Like, we live in just an area that money touches every part of life. I don’t think you should be running out of things to talk about, and if you are, you should probably start learning more because there is so much to learn in this space, right? Like, there is so much in finance to know and to learn that like if you can’t come up with things, I think it’s because you don’t have a deep knowledge base quite yet in finance.
Brad Johnson: Question on the topics, because where my brain goes as you climb the net worth ladder there typically taxes become more important as the higher number one goes up. Have you found taxes to be the number one magnet that brings in higher net worth sort of meetings to your calendar?
Thomas Kopelman: Absolutely. Because we ask what made you reach out. Everybody cites as one of the three reasons is taxes, right? Our average client bottom end is paying 250K in taxes. Our top client is paying 4.2 million in taxes this year. Like, tax planning is big. They have CPAs. Their CPAs really don’t communicate with them. They’re just like, “Let me file.” So, that’s what I build in-house is we have an EA in-house. We do tax projections. We do tax planning. We bring in their CPA. We help relay the information from them. And so, instead of going from a reactive tax approach, now we have tax planning 101 is awareness. Tax planning 201 is reduction. And so, how do we teach them this, how do we help execute on it, how do we make their life simpler. Because they’re high income. They’re running businesses. They have families. They don’t have a lot of time to think about it. They want that all offloaded.
Brad Johnson: So, when you onboard them as a client, are you basically saying, “Okay. Here’s your CPA. Cool. Let’s pull them on the next Zoom. I want to get them connected with my team. We’ll do the proactive ideas, bring them into the conversation.” Now, they’re helping execute?
Thomas Kopelman: So, a little different. So, what happens is most of our clients don’t have good CPAs. They have like, you know, the average CPA doesn’t specialize in a person running a business or making over $1 million a year, right? That a lot of times gets over the complexity level. And a lot of these CPAs they have 800 to 1,000 clients. They’re just not built around doing that. And so, for 75% of our clients, we build their team, we build their insurance people, we build their CPA. And I have a couple agreements with great CPAs where my clients pay them for planning, they pay them for filing, and then $1,000 a year extra to come to two meetings with us. We’re all on the same page, all working together, and I’m trying to get as many clients into those couple relationships, so it’s that easier for everybody.
But then we do have clients who do have good CPAs, and we go to work with them. If they say, “Hey, we won’t meet with you,” we tell the clients that, “Then you should fire them because if we’re not all going to work on the same page, it’s going to be way worse for you. I relay to you. You relay to them. They relay to you. You relay to me. That’s a lot of extra work for you. That’s not the service you’re looking for.”
Brad Johnson: Thomas, I’m picking up something here. You’re not afraid to be bold. Is that fair?
Thomas Kopelman: Yeah, I would say so. And I think, you know, our clients come in and that’s what they want, right? Like, everybody says, “I want somebody to help oversee like none of our people are talking. We’re doing different strategies. Nobody’s on the same page. There’s no proactiveness.” And we honestly like, you know, maybe replacement-wise, it’s probably like ten of our clients that we’ve had to do that. And they’ve all been like, “That actually makes sense,” right? Like, if they’re not going to respond for three weeks to an email, our clients want the answer in that moment that they actually have the time to think about what’s going on.
Brad Johnson: It sounds like you’re just setting a standard and, unfortunately, a lot of people that have dealt with subpar financial advisors, CPAs, estate planning attorneys, the bar’s here and you’re like, “No, our bar is here. And if your CPA chooses to rise to that, cool, let’s go, bring them in. If they don’t, they need to go because they’re going to slow us down. We’re not going to be able to do our job and operate at the level that we’re committing to.”
Thomas Kopelman: Yeah. And the interesting thing is when we meet with a good CPA, now they’re on our list. We know that there are people we can refer our clients to. And we all know the way that we think about things for our clients so I think that’s helpful. And I do think it’s important, right? Like, our process can be really good when we have the right other people to help serve our client. So, like the P&C people we use that are national, they know exactly what we want with our clients’ policies. They know their hiring network. They know we want max out liability coverage. They know we want umbrella. They know like how we think about, you know, we don’t care about low deductibles. We care about large outlays. Everybody’s kind of trained in the way of like, “Here’s the type of people we serve. Here’s what they need. Help us execute on this and make their life simple.”
Brad Johnson: Just like you shared with kind of the P&C, the CPA, the tax planning, same concept with estate planning, invite your estate planning attorney into the conversation or if they’re not like responsive or whatever, “Hey, we’ve got a network of estate planning attorneys.”
Thomas Kopelman: Yeah. None of them have any. We had two clients ever come in to us where the estate plan done. So, for the people that fits, we have them use Wealth.com, and then we also have them hire attorneys through Wealth, when they need some advice or people to do deed transfers or business ownership transfer stuff. And then we have vetted estate planning attorneys for clients when they are beyond that as well.
Brad Johnson: Cool. All right. We’re going to keep rolling because I know you’ve got an appointment coming up here pretty quick. Okay. Let’s circle back to the fee structure. So, I’m going to recap it, make sure that I don’t miss anything, but also I think it’s important to know your typical clientele are aged 30 to 50-ish, right, kind of that age range?
Thomas Kopelman: Yeah, I think I looked and I think our average client, RightCapital tells us, I think it’s like 39 or something.
Brad Johnson: 39 and also business owners.
Thomas Kopelman: Yeah. We have I would say…
Brad Johnson: Is that a requirement they’re a business owner or just…? Okay.
Thomas Kopelman: So, we have mostly business owners, I’d say like 75% to 80% of new clients. The other 20% are like, “I’m the head lawyer for a publicly traded REIT,” or we have some doctors that are super high income. It’s really the lens of very high income, very high taxes. We really need help on offloading this and tax planning. But our bread and butter in most of our focus really is business owners.
Brad Johnson: Cool. And then let’s talk through that fork in the road. “Hey, you can just pay us a fee for the planning and everything we do, which is a minimum of 12K per year. And then we can talk about how that scales,” or you went through the math earlier, but basically if you want to do kind of what I would call more standard finance where, “Hey, you move your assets over and we now charge a fee to manage those,” the breakeven is it has to be at least 12K to do that model?
Thomas Kopelman: We basically just do at 1.5 so 0.75. So, it’s about 15K for that because a lot of our clients, right, like we have very high income business owners that are new, like this is their third year of the business. They’ve doubled their income, their businesses, their net worth. Like, we have a client we work with that’s like 80 million net worth that they have a million liquid. So, a lot of these people, traditional advisory firms wouldn’t serve. We get this situation of we’re actually going to add so much value for you in a flat fee basis. And then when you sell your business and you have assets, you vetted us, you know that we’re going to do good work, and now you want us to offload that. And for me, with ultra-high net worth clients, I actually partner with like a very large, you know, in RIA that has about 10 billion in assets and I use their investment management team for very complex, large clients.
Brad Johnson: Cool. So, question on your like future casting your business model because you’ve got, you know, when you’re primarily your average client is 39 and they’re all primarily business owners. I’m looking at this windfall of 10, 15, 20 years out where you’re going to have a lot of business transitions, M&A, whatever that may be, going public, depending on who the client is. That’s where I foresee like assuming they trust you, you’ve got a great AUM platform. You might have these windfall events. Do you kind of foresee that or do you see people kind of sticking with the fee-based structure? Do you let people toggle back and forth between those or how does that work?
Thomas Kopelman: Yeah. People can switch once they have enough. If they want to switch over to the AUM side of things, they can. Again, if they wanted to do the 12K or 18K plus 0.35%, I found that it always gets pretty close. And so, at the end of the day, like, oh, if somehow they’re like, “Let me switch because instead of now I’m at 30, I’m at 25 or 26,” like that’s fine, whatever. Like, it’s all going to work out. Like, I’ve never had a client really try to get weird about pricing like that. But I do think, yes, we’ll have a lot of windfalls and I think I’ll bring on a pure just investment person down the line to handle all of that. I love the planning. I do like investments. I don’t want to manage and do the trading and all of that myself.
So, I think that’ll be an area we go down because I will hit capacity. I mean, right now, I have about 80 households and I would say 30 of them aren’t ideal long-term fits or clients I’ve had since as long as I can remember that probably next year I’m going to have to like pass them to a different client. Around me, I have two full time people, one ops, one just pure planning and tax planning. So, I’ll be able to work with my 120 good fits in that situation. So, it should be good. I mean, we’ll probably get to a point where average clients 20 plus thousand a year. It’ll be a good thing. And then my vision right now is I’m going to bring on an advisor I know really well and we’re going to launch an ultra-high net worth wing and we’ll build around that and bring an investment team on.
And then I’ll bring advisors who do equity comp, who do doctors, who do just specialty advisors. And then prospect comes in. Great. This person specialize in what you’re going through. Pay them a salary and I will generate all of the clients for them kind of in the way that James does it. That’s been the vision if I decide that I want to grow with more advisors.
Brad Johnson: Well, I mean, what I kind of – this is my opinion. I believe based on what you’ve described here today, you’ve built a bit of like a kind of a virtual family office, where if you ever decided like, “Hey, we want to do like a true family office,” once you approach 10 million plus is kind of a standard bar there, I mean, you’re already assembling the team. Now, it’s do you bring some people in-house just because the bandwidth’s there. Is that kind of where you’re headed a bit?
Thomas Kopelman: Yeah. I mean, I view the true family office approach of like 100 million plus like the firm I partner with, they have it and it starts at 20K a month or 25K a month of fees. So, like I don’t know if we want to do build, pay, and things like that but potentially because like right now I have, I think, probably nine clients or ten clients above 10 million with I think 3 or 4 above 50. And so, like we’ll have these really good opportunities coming down the line. And a lot of my business owners, they make a ton of money and they’re brand new to this business. So, they are going to have liquidity events or they’re just going to keep these really high profit machines where they’re just churning income and investing and they do private investments and they do all these other things.
Brad Johnson: Well, cool. Well, man, we could keep rolling. I feel like we’re just hitting the stride here but you’ve got a meeting right up around the corner. So, first off, thanks. This has been awesome, Thomas. I’m so glad Sara connected us. Look, like I said, I might be in Indy a little later this year for some 14-year-old football, so I will definitely give you a heads up if that happens. Last question. So, this is the Do Business Do Life podcast. How Triad really defines that is we want to help our members build a business that blesses their life, that doesn’t become their life, where there’s kind of this integration versus this tug of war. I’d love to hear your thoughts. Just what’s Thomas’s definition of that?
Thomas Kopelman: Yeah. I mean, I think it’s interesting because like I said in the beginning, just for a while, it’s all like I’m never going to like working. I’m not going to enjoy it. And I finally found this area where like just it almost feels like I’m playing a video game, right? Like, what I’m doing is so fun. I’m building like I don’t dread work any single day. And you know what? I think success and a good life for me looks like it’s that I build something really awesome with people I love. So, I’ve taken the exact opposite approach of don’t hire people you know. My hire, that’s my EA. It was my best friend from childhood. He’s a CPA, brilliant guy. I know the people in my life that are qualified to do good work and that we’ll work together with and building that with people you love.
And he got to leave busy season and bad pay and a job he hates to come over and he’s like, “Man, this is the best thing that could ever happen.” I can pay him way more than he was ever going to make. He can have a great life. And then the next person I hired was somebody I knew from before, who I knew was amazing at her job and I brought her on. And then my dad’s the outsource CFO for some of the clients that we have. And I just get to do a lot of these cool things. And as I expand, I do want to bring on people that I care about that I know are qualified, that I know will do good work, and I want them to have that feeling because I know a lot of my friends, they hate work.
They hate going on Monday. They don’t get this. And like you live for the weekend and like, I’m not even lying when I say like sometimes on the weekend, I’m like choosing to work because I’m sitting at the pool. Of course, I’ll do some work or create content like this is fun to me. And so, like it feels weird to say like I feel like I’m in this place where I’m just in love with where my life is. I’m not the advisor that’s looking to scale and sell. I’m like, “Why would I ever want to get rid of this when I can make a very good amount of money and love every day?” Like, I don’t want to go do nothing. That doesn’t interest me in any way.
Brad Johnson: Yeah. No, I love that, man. I feel the same. It’s exciting to love what you do and be passionate about what you do. So, well, my man, I will let you get because I know you’ve got an appointment but just had a blast. So, thanks for the rapid fire knowledge drop that you did. I know this is going to get – we’re going to put this on Twitter, and I have a feeling you’re probably going to get some traction out there with this conversation. So, thanks for pouring in, man.
Thomas Kopelman: Yeah. Thanks for having me on. This was fun.
Brad Johnson: All right. Till next time. See you.
