Welcome to the New Planner Podcast, where it's all about helping you successfully enter the financial planning profession and accelerate your financial planning career.

This podcast will help you understand the profession, become familiar with the various career paths available to you, and avoid the mistakes that limit your success.

Join your host, Caleb Brown, to explore the human side of creating a successful planning career through interviews, personal experience, and insights from the trenches.

Let's get started.

Caleb Brown:      Welcome to the 145th episode of the New Planner Podcast, this is Caleb Brown, your host. My guest today is Joel Cavaliere, a financial advisor at Blue Heron Capital in Denver, Colorado.

Joel stops by the show today to discuss his path to becoming a financial planner, starting with why he wanted to pursue financial planning, what his thought process was around attending career fairs while still in school, why he knew the insurance channel wasn't the best fit for him even though he had success, how he passed the Series 65 exam, and why he waited almost three years to finally take the CFP exam.

He also shares why he joined a small boutique retirement planning firm right out of school, and how he fit with the owners of the firm.

Plus, why he was comfortable joining a firm that worked almost exclusively with retirees who are much older than him, what he did for the firm when he first started out, and how his career has progressed and how he adds value currently.

Stay tuned to the end where he discusses how he faces and deals with the ageism of prospective clients, what his future plans are, and some tips for new planners.

If you're concerned that you might be too young to work with retired clients, then this episode is for you.

Joel, welcome to the New Planner Podcast.

Joel Cavaliere:    Hey Caleb, thanks for having me, excited to be on today.

Caleb Brown:      Thank you for coming. Man, you rejected me several times, I think you were studying for the CFP exam. So, how did you fare there? What was the outcome?

Joel Cavaliere:    Well, I passed, I sat for the March 2023 exam, and passed it on the first try, thank goodness. It was a little bit tough over a year of studying while working, but at the end of the day, it was totally worth it.

It's been about three months of having it now, I guess only about two months of having the CFP because I had to get everything finished with the CFP Board. But it's nice to have it and nice to be done with all that stuff, so pretty exciting.

Caleb Brown:      Do you feel any different, any smarter, any taller? Do you feel taller?

Joel Cavaliere:    Yeah, a little bit taller, maybe a couple of inches. But I mean, one of the coolest things is just kind of writing emails and seeing those three letters behind the name. I don't know, it just feels different.

Caleb Brown:      Good work on that. And I want to come back to that if we have time, but just start us off on why did you wait, let's just call it, three years to take the exam versus taking it right out of school?

Joel Cavaliere:    Good question. I mean, so when I got out of school, I had my insurance license, so I had done that. I did an internship with Northwestern Mutual and got the life and health insurance license, and then I got out of that and spent the last semester in school just working, finishing up, and then COVID hit right around that time. So, that was a huge change.

And then obviously, started talking with you, Caleb, and you hooked me up with Carl and Linda Gardner who got me into their firm here. So, super small firm, there's only six of us right now.

And then from there, I ended up working on the Series 65 license, so that took a few months just to get investment licensed on my end. And then after that, I was like, “Okay, I want a break.”

So, I took a little bit of a break from studying, and then for about a year and a half I guess, of working here, I was like, “Let's start looking at the CFP.”

Because unfortunately, none of my classes from CSU counted as the correct education portion. So, I had to go and redo all the classes basically through Dalton to do that. So, that was kind of unfortunate.

I think CSU's program isn't quite … I don't know if they are now or not, but the classes didn't transfer over, unfortunately, according to CFP Board.

Caleb Brown:      Wow, maybe they weren't registered, because I mean you've got a financial planning degree.

Joel Cavaliere:    Right, I was financial planning-

Caleb Brown:      That is bizarre.

Joel Cavaliere:    I just think it wasn't registered at the time. I mean, CSU's program was pretty new when I was first starting. I think we were the second group of students or something like that, that were going through. So, I think it was pretty new.

I don't know if it is now or not, but I knew CU, of course their courses count and everything like that, but CSU for some reason when I was doing it, didn't.

Caleb Brown:      So, take us from the top. You mentioned you were at an insurance firm internship, that didn't work out, then you kind of got in with Carl and Linda. So, maybe just start there and then we will just progress throughout your career.

Joel Cavaliere:    Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think that's a good story to tell too because I think a lot of people in the same sort of nature that I had may find themselves on this path. And it worked out at the end of the day, everything ended up working out really well.

My sophomore year of college, I actually was looking at doing an internship because I thought it's probably going to be really important for me to show some experience coming out of college, and if I can get two years of internship, and then when I graduate, go into a full-time spot, that's great.

Though, my sophomore year, I actually had gone to all the career fairs and everything, which highly recommend doing that if you're still in college, going out to those and meeting people.

And even if you don't know if you're going to get an internship that summer, just going out there and having conversations with firms because then you get used to it.

Because then the second time I went out to that career fair, my junior year, because I didn't do one my sophomore year, but my junior year when I went out, I was talking to a bunch of different places and felt comfortable doing those types of things.

And so, eventually, there were a few places that I looked at for internships and Northwestern Mutual offered up their internship program, which I'm sure, Caleb, you've probably had a few people on here that have done that internship and talked about that, I'm guessing.

Caleb Brown:      Yes, we have.

Joel Cavaliere:    That internship, it's interesting. I mean, it was a little bit of a grinds and also, just a bit uncomfortable, it gets you out of your comfort zone. Basically, the way it works is, you go into the internship and you're working on a book of business, which is your friends and family almost.

I mean, that's really what you're working off of, and you got to just get referrals. That is the business, and you're asking your friends and family for three or four people they might recommend to get financial planning.

And really, at Northwestern too, when I was there at least, I don't know, maybe the programs changed a bit. But when I was there, mostly it's just whole life insurance, disability insurance, just insurance stuff. It's not full financial plan, at least for the internship piece.

Obviously, if you go past that with Northwestern and you have your own practice, or you're working with somebody that has a firm at Northwestern, it's going to be different. But the internship program was really me just cold calling and building my book of business.

So, I ended up doing … I think I sold something like eight or nine policies there which was enough to keep me going for half a semester. And eventually, I just got to the point, I had a couple of policies that just weird relationships with friends after we did some business together and it was just like, “It's not me, it's not my spot.” It just wasn't where I wanted to be.

I didn't want to just sell things — selling's a piece of financial planning, but it really felt like that was what all it was focused around.

So, it was amazing experience. It was awesome to have that on my resume. And I honestly don't think that I would've gotten this job if I didn't have something like that on my resume.

Because I was able to say, I've worked with clients for eight months and I've gotten client relationships, I've gotten introductory skills about how to talk to people, about how to work with insurance at least.

And I was able to put on there a lot of stuff that was real world experience that when Carl and Linda looked at it, they were like, “Well, this is awesome, but we also see why it wasn't a great fit and why you might be a better fit at our firm,” which was pretty cool.

And I think you did a good job highlighting that through your program, Caleb.

Caleb Brown:      Well, and that's one of the reasons why I wanted to talk to you. I mean, you had eight years, I mean, as a college student … I'm sorry, eight months, I've just promoted you, now you're a lot older, eight months.

And then you had some, you didn't mention this, but I just remember I was looking at your resume, you had some other sales experience in like a sporting goods store or something.

Here's a guy that's comfortable talking with people, he’s out there working, he showed up, he’s gotten dressed up, he showed up on time, he’s got references and he's been out in the workforce, and that's great.

I mean, that certainly relieves some — and we've talked about this a lot on the New Planner Podcast. Like the firm owners have a lot of risk in hiring someone. I mean, when you're out here working for eight months, almost a year, it's like, “Okay, well maybe he's serious about this.”

I mean, it's harder for them to say, “Oh, Joel, he's just going to bail, and he's not really interested in it.” It's harder for them to say that, you saw that. So, I cut you off, so keep going.

Joel Cavaliere:    Yeah, did the internship, and what happened was I did that internship and then I went into, I think it was my senior year and COVID hit. And so, luckily, we had started, I think the process of interviewing or at least getting into your process over there. And then you had a couple job openings.

So, I started talking with a couple of different firms actually and there was two that were I think pretty serious. And I was going through the interview process with each of them. And then eventually, one of them fell through, ended up not working out.

And so, I was still talking with Carl and Linda. And one of the things that kind of stuck with me that kind of goes back to what I was saying before was they are really strong on, Linda and Carl always say, “We can teach skills, we can teach knowledge, but we can't teach heart.”

And so, if you are out there looking for your job, you're looking for the right place to be, as long as your heart's in the right place and your mind's in the right place to do the best thing for these people and that you're going to go and work your hardest at it, and employers can see that — there's a lot of firms out there that don't necessarily care too much about the experience that you have or the knowledge that you have. It's really about the dedication that you're going to put towards it.

That's what they're huge on, was just have the heart for it and we'll teach you everything else. So, I really liked how they were taking that approach and how it sounded too.

So, Blue Heron's a retirement planning firm, so I've worked with older folks, like in my older job, like the one you referenced Caleb when I worked at Big 5 Sporting Goods, I swear, man, only old people shop there.

So, I was working with older folks then, and I loved it, I knew I liked that. And so, we're working with folks age 50 to age 70 in retirement or before retirement. I knew I liked working with those types of people and it just kind of worked out to be that, “Hey, that previous experience kind of translated weirdly over to this business too.”

Caleb Brown:      Well, what was it about Carl and Linda, just the firm? I mean, it was during Coronavirus. I mean, it was a little bit … a lot of people were freaked out. They kind of kept the foot on the pedal, which was, I mean, kudos to them. I mean, it's paid off, it's worked out for them.

I mean, you could have held out, I mean, you had some other prospects. I mean, why was this a fit? Why did you click with these guys?

Joel Cavaliere:    That's a great question. So, I remember actually before even looking at career, before even my senior year, I was trying to figure out a place, because I had done a little bit of Northwestern by that point.

So, there was two months of working at Northwestern, and I was seeing how to build my book of business, and how hard that is. I mean, that is just really hard, a lot of people don't find much success in that.

So, what I was trying to do even before that was my parents had their own financial planner, and he was a little bit older in age and he had a book of business and I knew that he wasn't able to handle everything.

So, I was trying to just find a place where I could be, where I was maybe with somebody who had a lot of experience and a book of business already built that may need some help.

And so, oftentimes, what I've heard is that there's people that maybe older and their years that are looking for that type of help and potentially taking over the business down the road.

And so, what ended up happening is when I went through your program, Caleb, is when I was meeting with these different people, there was another firm that I’d talked to, but then Carl and Linda, they're a little bit older in their age, but they built this beautiful book of business and they really needed help.

Linda especially, she was the only advisor here. She really needed help with paraplanning at that time. Just somebody to get the prep work done and go a little bit further in depth.

She had her assistant that would help out with prep, but she didn't have somebody that was well-versed in planning to help out. And so, that really spoke to me.

I was like, “I would love to … first of all, I love the planning piece of things and just doing planning. And at that time, I was a little bit nervous around the sales side of things just because of Northwestern and just a little tentative there.

So, I was like, “This sounds great, I can just do planning. I can learn by just sitting in meetings, talking with these folks and see how she works.” And then eventually, over these years, hopefully, as we continue to build, start taking things over even more as they get older, and they want to draw back on what they're doing too.

And so, we're in the beginning steps of setting that up right now, of figuring out basically succession plan and such for that, but it's very early steps. But it's exciting because that's exactly what I was trying to look for, was a place where I can go that already has the book of business.

They already provide leads that I don't have to go out there and just try to build it myself because I saw how hard it was and saw it ruin a couple of relationships and it just wasn't the route I wanted to take.

Caleb Brown:      Yeah, you chose the apprenticeship model, find somebody that's already got it built and come in and learn from them, which is a great path to success. I mean, you can succeed in a lot of different ways in this profession, that's the beauty of it, thanks for highlighting that.

I mean, just walk us through what are you doing? You said paraplanning, and then what are you doing right now? What's your role and how are you adding value?

Joel Cavaliere:    So, now, I'm an advisor. When I started here, really it was just prepping files as if I was her assistant. So, I learned from Linda's assistant Angie, and she just trained me on how to do the general prep for files and client meetings.

And then what started changing was I would sit in on the meetings, and so I’d prep a file for the meeting and then Linda would say, “Alright, well, these are really nice clients, they've been around for a long time, they'd be more than happy for you to sit in.”

So, I'd start sitting in, in those meetings. I wouldn't talk hardly at all. I'd react, I'd make it so it's not uncomfortable that I'm sitting there, but I'd sit there and just watch and take notes.

And I wouldn't just take notes on the client meetings, but I'd take notes on what Linda was saying too, just so I could learn that piece because I'm like, “If I'm going to succeed here, it's got to be a model that they're comfortable with as well.”

Linda knows that if I'm going on myself and taking meetings, that we're all going to talk the same way. And so, that was key. So, for, gosh, I think maybe a year and a half, I was just prepping files and it slowly started turning into doing more and more of the planning.

So, it was first like literally just putting numbers in the spreadsheets and updating things and prepping things off for the meeting, and Linda does all the planning, and I'd sit with her to prep those meetings then. But then it started doing okay.

I would start taking over more and more of the prep so that Linda doesn't have to do that prep going into the meetings. And so, it got to a point, and we're still doing joint meetings right now, just on a lot of our larger clients and a lot of those clients that are used to both of us in those meetings.

So, we're still doing those together, and that's actually primarily most of what we're doing just because we have a lot of folks coming through. But there are a lot of meetings too that I take myself with clients now, we have a different structure where basically folks are calling in and we're talking with them.

So, first meeting, Zach and I, we're both advisors here. We'll both talk with any first-time callers for the first meeting, and we'll go into a second meeting and typically, it's still just Zach or I meeting with those clients.

And then we bring those clients in for another meeting where Linda can meet with us as well just because of the way that we market, which we may talk about in a bit with the radio show as well.

But it really evolved from just basic prep at the start to starting to do more each step and step. And then each year, we just kept doing more and more and now, just starting to take client meetings ourselves, and onboard clients ourselves as well.

Caleb Brown:      You mentioned prep a file several times; what does that entail?

Joel Cavaliere:    Good question. Really, there's a lot that we look at, of course, when we go into a client meeting. So, of course, we are preparing for, usually, there's some sort of reason for the meeting. If there's not a reason for the meeting, we're probably going to figure out why that's the case and maybe we aren't going to have that meeting.

So, 99% of the time there's a good reason we're having a meeting with a client for either some sort of a review of how things are going, how the plan's going, any update on goals and such.

And so, when I prep, what we would do is we'd get all the current values of investment accounts and put that in our spreadsheets, and then we'd be putting that into our retirement planning software, so we use Retirement Analyzer.

I know in college, I used a couple different softwares like I think it was eMoney and one other one, I can't remember.

Caleb Brown:      MoneyGuidePro maybe.

Joel Cavaliere:    Yeah, MoneyGuidePro. Yep, we use those. And so, it's pretty similar: Retirement Analyzer was pretty similar. It was a little bit more sophisticated in some ways, it was a little bit different.

So, prep and RA, Retirement Analyzer was a big piece of the prep with the file, and then just gathering everything that the client wants to talk about or any of the goals the client has for that meeting.

And so, we'd be looking at not only some of their questions that they might have beforehand to make sure that we're prepared for those. And also, looking at, we have a lot of insurance here, and assets under management.

So, we're going to look at investments, how those are doing, are they properly allocated right now, do we want to suggest any changes? That's evolved over time, and obviously, now taking over most of that investment recommendation type things, give those to Linda and let her decide when she's on client meets herself.

And then of course, looking at insurance too, because insurance has its own deadlines, and for annuities or life insurance that we have to keep track of with the client files too.

So, oftentimes, we'll have reviews or meetings with clients just because they're coming up on an annual deadline that we need to hit for some insurance payment, whether it's life insurance, or we're doing like a reallocation. So, lots of different stuff.

Caleb Brown:      You mentioned earlier, and I just want to make sure I heard this right, it sounded like there was a new prospect, like if I call in, it sounds like you … and I think you said Zach meet with me, and then you'll meet with me again, and then they'll have a third meeting, and then you'll bring in Linda.

That seems like a lot of meet and like, am I signed up by then or what? I'm just not clear on the process, that seems like a lot.

Joel Cavaliere:    Good question. I mean, so what's sad about it, Caleb, is we used to have maybe twice the amount of those meetings until we had people come on for something situations, it was bad.

And so, that was one thing that we all worked on as a team and it helped out having Zach and I here to just help provide the time so that we could refine the process because for a bit there, we were meeting with prospects for about five meetings maybe until they became clients, four to five.

And so, now we've got this process, so most of our leads will come in from radio. So, I'm on the radio every other week, which is super fun. And so-

Caleb Brown:      What's the name of the show? You want to plug the show?

Joel Cavaliere:    Yeah, I'll plug the show. It's Your Money, Your retirement. And so, we're on radio KHOW at 10:00 AM, and then we're on 93.7 Freedom at 9:00 AM. So, if you ever tune in, you might hear me on there.

Caleb Brown:      Celebrity, I like it.

Joel Cavaliere:    That's right, my family always cracks up when they're listening on the weekends. They're like, they always text me to say some things, but that's something that is-

Caleb Brown:      Here's a question, is it you or is it really ChatGPT?

Joel Cavaliere:    Yeah, we just plug my voice in there, we try to make it work.

So, folks are coming in from the radio show and what we do, they'll call in, we have a $250,000 minimum. And so, we always start out with a 20-minute phone call. And so, when Zach and I are taking those 20 minutes, and we want to do it right when they call.

So, I mean, if we're not available, we'll schedule it the next day, but we really want when the prospect is feeling that fire and they know that they're calling in and they're ready, we want to take that call.

So, we take those 20 minutes, usually ends up lasting about 30 just because it gets a little chatty, but that's alright. And we take as much info as we can.

If they're qualified and they have 250K or more that can be invested, then we go on to a step two. If they have a million or more, usually we'll bring Linda in for a step two, is what we call it.

So, step one was the phone call, step two is an hour-long office visit. So, we'll bring them in. Usually, Zach and I just take in those, but sometimes if they're highly qualified, we'll bring Linda in right away.

And so, that next hour visit, we have them bring documents, we have them bring everything that we need as much detail on.

And usually, we're asking for a lot; we're asking tax return, living expenses, social security statements. We're asking investment statements, and we're asking pay stubs if they're working, an estate planning document. We want everything in that meeting because we don't want to waste our time either.

And if a client is serious about becoming a client, they're going to bring everything. If they aren’t serious about it, they're probably not going to bring everything. And there you go, we're not going to move forward; we're not going to waste our time.

So, we go to that step two, we have an hour-long meeting, we chat about those questions and everything in more detail.

Caleb Brown:      That's a great screen that you put in place intentionally because just another angle, I mean, when I was doing it a long time ago, we were targeting delegators and we'd tell the delegator like, “Bring in all this stuff.” They're like, “No, we don't really want to, we hate this stuff, can't you just do everything?”

It's like a lot of times they were really still really good clients, but they did not want to pull anything together. I mean, so it’s just another angle.

So, they haven't paid a fee or signed a contract and you're going to meet with them three times, then you decide, or they decide whether they want to go forward?

Joel Cavaliere:    Right, so that next meeting, we have all the stuff, we have that all that info. So, this part, we've done this way in the past, we're still debating and each client situation's a little bit different.

But typically, we take all those statements, all the information that we have, and we plug that into our retirement software so that we can give them a good look about their situation, and it's still a rough draft.

Obviously, we still need to refine goals and make sure everything's still looking correct, but we will literally put that into our software and schedule an hour and a half long, two-hour meeting with these clients so that we can look at that software together, and they can really see the value that we can provide because we do charge a little bit higher fees than I think typical firms do charge.

And so, one way that we've found a lot of success is through showing them the value that we can give even though we're showing our answers, we're showing our hand in that step three meeting — the fact that we can show what we can actually do and it's actually their numbers is how we see a lot of success.

So, Linda being a CPA, a certified estate planner and a member of the ED Slott Master Elite IRA Group, and then myself being a CFP here, and then of course, we've got the whole team, we think from what we do tax planning-wise, investment planning-wise, everything, estate planning — everything that we do here that our fee of 1.4% annually, it does tear down for higher invested amounts with us, but that 1.4 is justified.

So, we really think that when people hear that upfront, they get kind of cold feet because they're used to like 1% or something like that.

Caleb Brown:      Well, it sounds like you're saying planning in and investments in that fee.

Joel Cavaliere:    Yes, yep, everything. So, that's a wrap fee, that's our wrap fee. W-R-A-P, just basically no separate transaction fees, no separate planning fees, everything's involved in that 1.4. And we mainly focus on just people that want to fully engage or basically invest their assets with us where we're getting that 1.4%.

Caleb Brown:      So, I mean, you're doing a lot of work without really getting the commitment. I mean … just ballpark off the top of your head, I mean, what's the close ratio?

Joel Cavaliere:    You know, small type things, these types of things, we are still trying to work out ourselves because each year, we accomplish new things and then we got to go back and try to accomplish other things.

And so, that's one of the things that we need to do better at. I'd say our close ratio is anywhere between 25 to 30%, but we really need to track it more on what we do.

Caleb Brown:      That sounds kind of low though, I mean, you're doing all that work. I mean, it's a lot of work. Yeah, well we may have to have you back on once you guys get a better handle on that.

I was just trying to understand, it's a very unique process and I mean, kudos, it's been successful, and you guys are doing great. You said earlier, and again, maybe I misheard this, but you guys are starting to talk about like succession plan, I mean, that's amazing. You've only been in the business three years.

Joel Cavaliere:    Yeah, yeah, no, that part's really exciting, and their goal was just to pass it on to somebody that understands the business and can do it.

And so, we're starting to look at those first initial steps for it. We'll see where it ends up going, but I know it's a goal of theirs, and a goal of theirs just to start drawing back.

And so, just kind of looking at that and figuring out what the best plan is for that going forward. Because one of the things is, is of course, we've got one of the biggest age gaps here.

We've got Linda who's looking at retiring and she's right around 70, and then I'm over here at 25, and we're just going straight one to the other. We're going to lose a lot of folks just because of age.

And I get that objection all the time from people of just, “You're too young.” And so, that's another reason why, honestly, Caleb, we got to show that value-

Caleb Brown:      The clients are saying-

Joel Cavaliere:    Yeah, we'll get that. I mean, we just get it. I mean, you see me on this video call here, I'm a young-looking dude, and so I got to show as much value as I can in those two meetings or else, they're going to be, “He's just a kid, I'm not going to pay a high fee like they're charging it,” so we got to show them why.

And that's why we have that process, and it does take time. It takes a lot of time and we're looking at getting — because Zach and I, we've taken on so much being those two guys now.

Of course, we still have Angie and Angela that Angela helps out with phone calls and getting everybody through. Angie helps out with prep, but she's mainly helping Linda a lot.

Zach and I are getting to a point where we're doing so much work that we need some help as well. So, we're looking at that and getting a paraplanner potentially for us in the next few months, which would be awesome.

Caleb Brown:      I had Andrew Fincher on episode 140, so check that out. And he gives a great answer on how he deals with that objection and pushback from clients. I mean, it was one of the best I've ever heard. So, check out episode 140, we'll link to that.

Joel, congratulations. I mean, three years out of school, you had to go take the CFP classes again, you got hired during COVID. You're working with the retirees at 25-years-old and having success, I mean, this is amazing.

Any final comments or tips that you'd like to leave the audience with?

Joel Cavaliere:    I'd just say just keep working at it, and like I was saying before, is just show the heart, show the dedication to working on it. And I think the right firm, if they have the right motives and everything, and they see that you’ll provide the heart, they'll teach you the skills.

And so, I think that's the biggest thing. Just work hard and if you keep doing that, then you'll find yourself in a good spot, so that's what I'd say.

Caleb Brown:      Joel, thanks for coming on.

Joel Cavaliere:    Thanks Caleb, thanks for having me, it was fun.

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