Only Fee-Only
This podcast interviews fee-only financial planners to learn about how they are helping their clients and serving their specific niches.
Only Fee-Only
#112 - Optimize Your Practice with Tips from Libby Greiwe
What if you could turn your financial advising practice into a seven-figure business while working just three days a week? In our latest episode, Libby Greiwe, host of the Efficient Advisor podcast, shares how she built a thriving practice by focusing on underserved clients and creating systems that align with her values and lifestyle.
We dive into her “systems to scale” framework—a proven method to refine your niche, attract ideal clients, and streamline operations. Whether you’re looking for quick wins or a full business overhaul, Libby offers actionable strategies to help you build a balanced, successful practice.
Connect with Libby on LinkedIn or visit theefficientadvisor.com for more insights.
Social:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/libby-greiwe?utm_source=share&utm_campaign=share_via&utm_content=profile&utm_medium=ios_app
How's it going? Everyone, welcome back. This is the Only Fee Only podcast, and today we're talking to Libby Grywee. She is the host of the Efficient Advisor podcast. She is a podcaster, speaker and advisor coach and she and her firm help advisors and planners create systems and processes so that they can work less, feel less overwhelmed and build a business and life that they love. She has a great podcast and when you have a great podcast, you're good at podcasting. So this is an absolute blast and we loved getting the chance to talk to Libby. So enjoy this podcast with Libby on the Only Fee Only podcast.
Speaker 2:How's it going everyone? Welcome to another episode of the Only Fee Only podcast. I'm Peter Travello, I'm here with my co-host, brock Buckles, and today we're very excited to have Libby Grywe on. I'm really excited to have her share her story and share what she's building at the Efficient Advisor. So, libby, welcome to the show.
Speaker 3:Awesome, and you nailed the last name. You guys got it right.
Speaker 2:Yes, well, most people butcher my last name, so I have to, you know, pay some attention when pronouncing other names, because otherwise I'm a hypocrite, but so happy to have you on here. For those who don't know who you are, you want to give a quick overview of who you are and a little bit about your business.
Speaker 3:Yeah, sure. So I started in the industry you know when you had to walk uphill both ways in the snow about 20 years ago back in 2004. And I started my practice from scratch fresh out of college, grew it to seven figures as a solo advisor and then sold it back in 2019 so that I could focus on helping other advisors and having a bigger impact on the overall financial planning community through coaching and helping other advisors build out their systems and processes. So what I became quote unquote known for while I was running my practice was that I was working three days a week. So when I got pregnant and found out that I was having my first child, I wanted to kind of ditch the 70, 80 hour hustle mentality that I had and really pair back so that I could be a super present mom.
Speaker 1:Yeah, First of all, great start to the podcast, Libby. That's awesome, I mean, I absolutely love that. No, seriously, it's like a lot of people don't get it and they think that you have to hustle your way right and like your whole life either has to be like I'm going to have like a lifestyle practice and I don't really care about income, or I'm going to do the 70, 80 hour a week thing and just grind myself into a nub, right, and so that's not a great option either. But tell me this, like a lot of people think you know you said the snow thing, the snow analogy. It used to be a lot harder, I would say, to start a practice, right. Like what are the things that you kind of think about as far as starting a practice when you were early on versus today?
Speaker 3:Well, you know, I don't know if it's harder, I think it's just just like anything else, it's just, it was just really different. So when I looked around back so this was back in 2004, when I looked around, everybody around me was fat, most homogenous group of advisors you have ever seen, and it was really difficult to be a young female wanting to do everything differently, right? The mentality at the time very much, was if you wanted to make more, you had to work more and you had to hire your wife to work for you for free. And I remember being like 23,.
Speaker 3:A young, a young chick looking around, going. Well, I don't have a wife, so like I don't know what I need to do to get one of those, but I would love to have someone work for me for free and it was just a totally different environment at the time so it was just a different kind of hard, if that makes sense we didn't have. I mean I always it amazes me because I was, I was an advisor before, LinkedIn was even a thing Right Like, and that's really weird to me.
Speaker 3:So I think it's a different environment now, but it also comes with its own different level of hard.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, let's touch on that a little bit.
Speaker 2:I mean, what were some of the ways that you built your practice, you know, in the beginning, as compared to now?
Speaker 3:practice, you know, in the beginning, as compared to now. Oh my gosh.
Speaker 3:So I was a phone dialing maniac like just an absolute maniac and and really I kind of did two key things so I became this huge sponge. So I found other advisors who were in the same ecosphere as me when I started and just was basically asking them if I could tag along and work. Do any of their grunt work Like, give me your crappiest clients, give me the 80 year old lady on oxygen. I want her, I will go see her and I will figure out how to squeeze that lemon and make some lemonade out of it. And it was literally doing everything that I could and taking the kind of work that they weren't you know that was I don't want to say below or beneath them, but really that they had kind of scaled above and literally taking these scraps and using them as case studies.
Speaker 3:So I was probably one of the few advisors at the broker dealer that I started with who literally read every single prospectus and every single insurance contract to really genuinely understand the inner workings of all of our things. And I used those experiences to kind of fine tune my knowledge, my understanding to make mistakes on other people's small clients, right when I had guidance and mentorship and feedback. And then it kind of consequently, at the same time I was also making 5 million phone calls trying to get my own book started and it was just, it was a lot.
Speaker 2:Yeah, who are you calling? You know?
Speaker 3:where do you get?
Speaker 2:this prospect list of 100?.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so a couple of different places. So my broker dealer gave me, of course, like this awful book of everybody else's not just like leftovers but like the worst possible leftovers, yeah, not even orphans, like we're talking like like 90 year old orphans, like the ones that I mean.
Speaker 3:It was it was they wanted to meet because it was this nice, sweet young girl that wanted to come out and say hello. Um, so I was calling the orphan book and that was great because that that gave me the opportunity to figure out what was my hook, like how did I get them interested without twisting arms? But how could I really fine tune my language? And I kept kind of finding stumbling across different phrases that really made sense or really worked, and using that knowledge that I had built from the insurance contracts, from reading the prospectuses, and translating that into something that was like oh, this is new, different, interesting or time sensitive and it makes sense for us to meet. So I was in the orphan book and then I was also really active at my church and was literally calling the directory. Like that's how bad it was in the beginning.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I remember those days. Yeah, I remember those days. And you know what? I think that, although it's not what we do now, there is something to it, right, like the grit that comes along with that, the refinement that comes along with getting to know people, understanding the way that people work, understanding what people respond to, and everyone wants to hate on the cold calling now, and I can appreciate that. Right, there's other ways to build a book of business, but the one thing that it does do is it teaches you a lot of skills that are very applicable for the rest of your life in every single situation. Would you agree with that? I mean?
Speaker 3:Oh for sure. And the best part about it was they have no idea what I looked like or who I was. So if I really screwed it up, it's not like if I ran into them in the grocery store they'd be like oh, there's that girl that called me. Right, it gave me a lot of a lot of refinement and a lot of scar tissue, which which was really helpful and really served me well long term.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, I love that and I love that you said that there was kind of that switch when you had your first kid. What was it? What was? What was your thought process when you're like, okay, I literally am going to somehow go from everything that I've ever known the 7080 hour a week to I'm gonna work three days a week, how did you go about trying to redefine what it meant to you to work and become more efficient that way?
Speaker 3:Yeah, well, I, just I it was. There's no greater um like encouragement to totally change your life than having a child. Like that, to me, was like the absolute push that I needed and it was one of those things and I think most advisors experience this, especially for those of us who are like three, four years and you have a successful practice, you're making money, but you're still grinding like crazy the whole idea of, well, I need to step out of my practice and really build some systems and processes and have some CEO time and work on the business. It all sounded good and fine, but when you're so in that tornado that is your practice and just trying to keep your head above water and deliver excellent service and put together all the things and hire more people and it's so hard to take the time out to do that.
Speaker 3:So for me it had been on the to-do list for what? Three years to like build some of this stuff. So getting pregnant was one of those like, okay, we have a very strong deadline coming up with not a specific due date, right, again, we have a rough idea, but at least I had this runway of knowing that I had a timeframe that, okay, I have got to get some stuff together and it was. It was really just putting into motion all of the stuff that I had been thinking about needing to do, but actually just carving the time out to do that. And I want to be really clear, right, I don't want to get it twisted that like all of a sudden in this like six, nine month window, I went from working 80 hours a week down to just 24.
Speaker 3:It was a progression over a three-year window. Right that it took time to methodically and intentionally get there, but I did go from that 80 hours down to 40 immediately, so really cut the amount of time that I was spending in my office by half just through actually taking time to automate, to delegate, to streamline and then, frankly, just to delete a lot of stuff that really actually wasn't moving the needle in my business.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I mean, what were some of those items that, like you, early identified where, hey, this is going nowhere, this is, I'm spinning my wheels going nowhere.
Speaker 3:Yeah Well, I think a lot of what we do as advisors is what we were brought up in the industry to do or what we were trained to do. And I see this with advisors that I coach all the time that when we start actually laying out their process step by step and really getting brutally honest with ourselves and saying why do you do that Doesn't matter, what is the impact that that has on your business or your client, there's so many things that we were taught to do or trained to do, or we see you know Brock's over on LinkedIn talking about how he does this and Matt's over here doing this thing and we started adopting all of these different strategies without really thinking through the lens of our ideal client avatar and does this thing actually matter to them? And so, getting really, really serious about every single thing that was a bullet item on our agenda, does this actually matter to our client? Does this move the needle forward or is it fluff? Same thing with the behind the scenes stuff what actually moves the needle and what was just fluff.
Speaker 3:So for me, I'll give you an example. I worked with executives who had executive compensation packages that were 5 to 10 years out from retirement and when we started going through their financial planning process step-by-step, line-by-line, task-by-task, we started looking at things like do they really care if we do X, y or Z? Most of the questions that they had were around retirement tax planning. Most of their kids had already gone to college, so by having some of these recommendations or getting into MoneyGuide Pro, we started looking at what modules actually matter to them right now.
Speaker 3:And what can we kick the can down the road on a little bit? How can we take the financial planning process and slow it down? So for us we were what I would say snorkeling, where we would do a MoneyGu guide pro. We do this big, huge plan and we'd stay up here, right, we got really shallow on 5000 different topics and we kind of threw that out the window and said let's instead put on scuba gear and get really really deep on what matters to these particular clients in year one and year two, and we can come to those other things that are ancillary, still good things to do from a planning perspective but maybe don't matter initially. And can we just slow the process down and get really, really deep on what's super important to our clients, all the way down to like our service model, like, what are we spending time on? Do our executives open a newsletter? The answer is no, they don't. And we tested it right. Is it the content? Is it the? No, they don't have time for that.
Speaker 1:So instead, of doing a newsletter.
Speaker 3:What can we do instead? Are they? Do they care if they get a birthday card? Do they like? What are all of these little things that we're doing throughout the year, that we're spending time on, and if we delete them, can we redeploy that time, effort, money, resources into something that actually really makes a difference to them and moves the needle?
Speaker 2:Mm-hmm. So which of those items are proven to be pointless, just from your experience?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I don't know if there's anything that's proven per se, but it's really getting brutally honest. So when I'm working with an advisor, we're looking at their service model and getting really, really honest with ourselves about how much value does that actually bring to your client. So at the Efficient Advisor, we have this thing that we call the impact scale, and so every single thing that you do for your client, we rate it on a scale of one to four, one being like oh, that's really nice. Two, wow, that actually moves the needle forward, helps the client, is impactful. They walk away from that meeting interaction saying, wow, that was really great.
Speaker 3:So, for example, you might do a beneficiary audit for your clients and call it a value add. And in the first year it's super helpful, right, we cleaned up all of their beneficiaries, we got the ex-wife off the 401k, we made sure their stuff was in alignment with their will and that was really impactful. But if we do that every single year, does it still have that same impact level? No, it probably doesn't. So instead of taking all of that time and energy to have them send us screenshots and to go out and make sure all the their beneficiaries probably haven't changed in a year.
Speaker 3:So does it have that same level of impact? And, if not, can we take the amount of time that our team was spending pulling together that beneficiary audit and redeploy it into a different value add this year? That's going to actually have the same level of impact that that beneficiary audit did the very first time? Yeah, it can be little stuff like newsletters, right, or spending a ton of time on social media that gets no engagement or isn't very effective. But it could also be the big planning stuff that we're spending a ton of time on that we think is really impactful. But when we get brutally honest about it, we're like it was, but maybe it's not as impactful this year and we can do something different.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like this is starting to look like the law of diminishing returns right, like they're not going to appreciate it the same way this year, just like when you get a brand new car. It's like, it's great, and then you're like at some point you're like, oh, I've been doing this for a while. Um, okay, yeah, that makes total sense. So I mean getting into that, cause I'm always really interested in, in kind of the I guess you could call it like the fact finding process right, or the getting to know the advisor. Like when someone comes to you and they say I want to make my practice more efficient. This is what I'm kind of thinking is wrong, or this is what I'm thinking, but I'm coming to you because I'm trusting that you're going to know better than I do, libby, because this is what you do. What is your process to diving deep and going on that scuba dive?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so it took me about 20 years, but we developed a framework that is basically what I call our systems to scale, and it's six layers that every practice has to have in order to operate at their highest level. Right, and whether that is scaling beyond, scaling like you want a 10X, you're 10X and bring in 5,000 other advisors, or you just want to be a highly leveraged practice, like I had, or you might want to be a solo advisor and be a lifestyle practice, if you want to use that term, or really just more in control of the number of hours that you're working, knowing that there's, at some point, some limitations that you might hit or some ceilings of capacity that you might hit. So the first thing that we're doing is we're always really so the six layers it's define. Then we have create, attract, systematize, scale and lead. Then we have create, attract, systematize, scale and lead. So the define layer is really getting into.
Speaker 3:Well, what is your sweet spot as an advisor? What are you good at? Who is your ideal client? What do they look like? What is your brand Understanding your branding pillars and your why story? So that foundational work that most advisors roll our eyes and we're like. I know I need to do it but that sounds really boring and I don't have time for it. It's actually really important because when we get very clear on who we serve and what we love serving about that, what we love doing for those and how we love to serve, we use that information to actually inform our processes. So, for example, I work with this advisor in Canada and she only wants to do retirement income distribution. Well, when we were looking at her offer that she was making to her clients, it had estate planning and protection planning and Medicare and insurances and PNC and all this stuff. And we said, well, what if you just take that all away and focus just in year one on being the absolute best and getting them set up in their retirement income distribution plan and then messing with that other stuff later, later. So it's getting really clear on who you want to work with, because then that will do a better job informing our processes.
Speaker 3:Then the second layer is create, and this is where we actually want to build your planning process, your start. So there's seven processes that every practice has to have and that's where you really want to get serious about documenting them, building SOPs, defining step-by-step, basically creating the wash, rinse, repeat processes that allow you to deliver client experience very, very consistently. And so that's the kind of the core thing for me is that everything we're doing has to be rooted in client experience. Your processes as boring as systems and processes sound, they have to be rooted in client experience. Your processes as boring as systems and processes sound, they have to be rooted in client experience. And when you root your process in a client experience, that's when you start building to that. So whenever I'm out talking and I talk about being a 100% referral-only planning practice and how we use systems to get us there, it's building and baking in that ideal client avatar's perfect process, the language that they're using, the things that resonate, the things that move the needle, the impact that it's having on them, baking that into our processes. So we've got define, we've got create and then we've got attract right, which is how to package and price your offers for your ideal client avatar. Then we have systematize, which is all of the time management systems, the SOPs, the automations, the delegations, streamlining, templates, checklists you name it. And then it's scaling, so really understanding inside of your business what are the scalable parts of our process and how do we actually start to teach and template those so that other people can do that for us, that we can better leverage our time. Again, regardless of which direction you're taking your practice in, you have to scale yourself first, and then you can scale your team. And then the sixth layer of that framework is leading and really taking time to step out of that advisor role and into the role of a CEO and actually developing your leadership skills so that you can build the same loyalty and tenure that we want from our clients. We also want that from our team. We want a team that's highly motivated, that's highly committed, and we have to.
Speaker 3:For me, I became a boss by accident, just because I needed help and I didn't really take that seriously. I really didn't become a leader and until I did, things were kind of a mess and I didn't understand why we were having turnover and I had employees that were playing solitaire instead of doing what they're supposed to do. And when I finally kind of stepped into that leadership role and really started developing those skills and started investing in my team, both personally and professionally, that's when everything started really to come together and we had that nice cohesive practice where we had the right people in the right seats and the right culture and the right overall vision and everybody was speaking the same language. That's when things became really, really started to gel and that's really where I got down to that 24 hours a week and stayed there, because our team was such a well-oiled machine, because they had all these systems and processes to run on.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's fantastic. Do you have something, pete?
Speaker 3:Sorry, that was like a lot of words no I love it, I love it.
Speaker 2:I couldn't just pick, you know, one of those bullet points to go over. I mean it is very systematic and I mean we can just hear it through your experience too, that you know you're like, okay, I had step three done and then I was discovering what step four was, and that's cool, how now you're able to, you know, create the content and silo it in a way to be able to help other advisors. You know, I mean just that little two, three minute section right there Brock's going to clip and repurpose.
Speaker 1:Woohoo, all right, I love a good repurpose. Yeah, no, it's fantastic. And I guess my my question would be because it seems like you guys have it. I mean, obviously you know what you're doing is there for the listeners? Are there people or firm sizes that you work better with? So is it that solopreneur? Is it the boutique level? Do you want to work with the enterprises like is there? Is there a firm level or the amount of people that you really feel like you best serve?
Speaker 3:Yeah. So the ideal client avatar for me is that advisor or advisory team that's for advisors or less, that is comfortable with who they are as planners. They know how to plan, they know how to bring in clients, they know how to position services. But they don't necessarily have they're at that place where, and you have to be there right. So I have brand spanking new advisors. Call me all the time and I'll go. Nope, you have to have clients to put through a process. So it doesn't matter how many processes, if there's no people to put through it, you're not going to stay in business.
Speaker 1:What a crazy idea.
Speaker 3:Isn't that wild? So you're supposed to do it messy, right?
Speaker 3:You're supposed to, you're supposed to go out there, try it, figure it out. And then, once you hit that point, there's this inflection point that almost every advisor has and I'm sure you guys have had it too where all of a sudden you're like, oh crap, everything that I prayed for has actually come true. And now I have this business that I wanted, but, oh, my goodness, I'm working for it instead of it working for me, and I just need to get my head above water and I just need to take the time. But, holy smokes, I don't have that kind of time.
Speaker 3:Those are the types of people that we do best work with. So we have advisors come through our program that have been in the business for three years or making $300,000, and have a part-time VA all the way up to teams of four that have $4 million of revenue and teams of seven, and the framework is designed to work for all of those right. So we are company agnostic, structure agnostic, compensation agnostic. It doesn't matter if you're a broker dealer or an RIA or a hybrid, or if you have three people or two people. Everybody needs the same seven systems and processes in their business.
Speaker 2:So what do these engagements look like? I mean, I know you have your podcast, you do some speaking events at conferences. I'm sure you do workshops and one-on-one firm coaching. What are the different levels that people can work with you?
Speaker 3:Yeah, actually. So in 2025, we are moving away. We have been slowly moving away from the one to one engagement and we have really been tripling down on our group coaching program. So it's a 10 month cohort where we walk through the systems of scale framework and we build out some of the most important processes inside of your practice, and so it's a weekly high touch very involved, but we get we get a lot of crap done in a finite amount of time. So what I love, I'm not a forever coach. You don't have to sign up and be with me for the next decade, right? It is 10 months to get you from uh, oh, my goodness gracious to wow. I actually feel organized. I feel like I'm going into this year with everything documented. I'm not playing catch up on nights and weekends anymore, and I feel like my team knows what they're supposed to be doing and when they're supposed to be doing it, as do I.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. Have you guys ever thought about and maybe you're already doing this but have you guys ever thought about like, packaging it as a class just to go over, like those first six steps, just for people that maybe aren't ready for the cohort, but they're like oh, this is good for me to know, just as my systems or anything.
Speaker 3:Yeah, oh, Brock, I feel like I couldn't have pitched you a better question to prep me for that. So this year we don't have the first six steps, but my absolute. I think the biggest needle mover for most advisors that's super underlooked is the first 100 days that a client experiences with you, and so this year I actually have a book coming out on onboarding in the first 100 days, along with a course.
Speaker 3:So for advisors, that's gonna be the best place to start if you want to go from like hey, that's on the to-do list to oh my gosh, I have a really well-defined onboarding process. When I was at XYPN, I actually had an advisor stop me in the lobby and say, hey, we'd worked together years ago. And he's like, hey, for the last two years we've been doing that onboarding process that we built and we have received more referrals within the first 100 days of a client relationship than we've ever received from clients that we've worked with for a decade or more, and I think so. I think this key little window for advisors is such an opportunity to really button things up, to really build a connection with your clients. So that's where a lot of our content is going to be focused on in 2025, with the book and the course coming out, and that's, of course, a piece of the bigger group coaching cohort. I love it Very cool.
Speaker 2:I love it. So, for those who want to follow along or maybe reach out, what's the best way to?
Speaker 3:Yeah, the best place to start is the Efficient Advisor podcast. It's designed to be super tactical, where every single episode has some sort of really easy to implement something you could literally do and change in your business tomorrow. They can also follow me over on LinkedIn. I do a lot of content over there, some short form content that are again just those kind of quick tips, quick hits, things that you can change or tweak tomorrow to make a big difference. And then, of course, they can check out the efficientadvisorcom.
Speaker 1:Awesome. Well, thank you so much, libby. Uh, it's been so fun to be able to talk to you and learn from you, um, so thank you so much for coming on.
Speaker 3:Yeah, thanks so much for having me this is fun, thank you.