Moving from Asset Centric to Client Centric in Finance: A Conversation with Tyson Ray

In this insightful episode of RIA Collective, host Charlie Van Derven engages in a thought-provoking conversation with guest Tyson Ray, the founding partner of Form Wealth Advisors. Urging a transition from a riches-focused mindset to a wealth-centered perspective, Tyson underscores the importance of nurturing total client relationships based on wealth, not just riches. Through anecdotes and experiences, Tyson details his journey in the finance industry, his transition towards total relationship investing, and the concept of 'funded contentment.' This episode unveils Tyson's passion for guiding clients toward their financial goals, breaking traditional molds, and employing technology to enhance client experiences. Listen in to understand his unconventional approach to wealth management and how he considers clients' lifetime goals central to wealth management. This conversation offers valuable insights for young advisors, independent advisors, and anyone seeking to redefine their perspective on wealth and client relationships.

Securities through Raymond James Financial Services, Inc. Member FINRA / SIPC. Investment advisory services are offered through Raymond James Financial Services Advisors Inc.  FORM Wealth Advisors is not a registered broker/dealer and is independent of Raymond James Financial Services. Raymond James and its advisors do not provide tax advice. Podcast guest is Tyson Ray, CEO, Founding Partner, Senior Wealth Advisor at FORM Wealth Advisors. FORM Wealth Advisors is located at 431 Geneva National Ave S, Lake Geneva, WI, 53147; 262-686-3005.

Transcript

Charlie Van Derven: [00:00:00] Thank you for tuning in to another episode of RIA Collective. I'm your host, Charlie Van Derven, as always, and I've got a cool guest today. And in fact, he hails close to where I hail from when I was younger. And listen, Tyson Ray, thanks for being here. I'm going to give you a quick little intro, Tyson, before I let you in.

Tyson. It's been a pleasure to get to know you, man. We have we have a similar mindset for where we've seen the industry be and where the industry is headed. And you've not only done, you don't only have the mindset, but you just wrote a book called the total relationship. I read the forward, we'd exchange the messages, see if you could be, I was looking for guests, see if you could be a guest on the podcast.

Yeah. I read the forword book, Tyson, and it hit like a ton of bricks dude. So I'm super excited to bring it to our audience. So I guess with that Tyson Ray founding partner of form wealth advisors in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. 

Tyson Ray: Here we are at the it's, I hope I'm not a cool guest. Cause it's winter up here, right?

Charlie Van Derven: it's been a weird winter though.[00:01:00] It's been quite mild. I've been pleased. 

Yeah. So I was actually tested out my camper. My brother lives in Plymouth. Near we were up there right before Christmas and I brought the camper up getting ready for this out West trip I'm doing.

And we had a night that got down to 15 Tyson. So it's, it gets a little cold girl. That's it. Yeah. Yeah. My blood's gotten done. Of course I grew up in green Bay. Hopefully you're a Packer fan 

Tyson Ray: too. Yes. The Lake's about to freeze over. Cause talking about mindset, I have been challenging myself to do the cold plunges here did one as, as recently as a few days ago here in 2024.

And that is a mindset you gotta tell yourself, get in and then try and control your breathing. And then it's amazing how fast you want to get out. 

Charlie Van Derven: And so we do a polar plunge every year, but it's in Florida. My Wisconsin, Minnesota friends are like, what are you even talking about, man? Like the waters, maybe 62 or 63.

And we're all like, Oh, it's really cold. I grew up swimming in lake Michigan, man. I remember what that was like. No, thanks. Tyson. That does take some mindset, [00:02:00] dude. Your book total relationship is all about. The advisor client relationship. And I would say more than that, it's about the transition of the client advisor relationship.

 We've got, I started working with advisors back in 98. So I've seen a lot of transition in the last 20, 25 years. You started a little earlier than that, if I'm not mistaken. 

Tyson Ray: Yeah. I started investing back when I was in my teenage years, but I started in the business coming out of college in 88.

So not right before you started. Back when you had the green computer screen to type in the quote and people actually had to call you to find out what the market was doing, right? 

Charlie Van Derven: Yeah. Wow. How the digital tools have changed 

Tyson Ray: this industry. And the jobs change. And I think that's what the industry is missing.

Charlie Van Derven: I agree. You still have a lot of mindset that goes back to maybe not the eighties anymore, but certainly the nineties and two thousands, two thousands, 10 and we've been through a lot of changes which. Frankly is one of the reasons I started our a collective, [00:03:00] right? So maybe we start there, right?

So I'll share with you. I I won't name any names or any firms or anything like that. I coach a bunch of advisors and the coaching relationships are we talk twice a month. And so I'm coaching an advisor who offices for, big firm big wire house firm offices out of Manhattan and two, 2.

5 million, I think was his minimum when we were working together and we got on a call and he said, Hey, Charlie, I landed two clients since our last call. And I'm like, heck yeah, man, great month. And and he said, yeah, problem is they're a little bit smaller, they're 250 I was like, what are you doing?

And he said X, Y, Z firm gives me a 2 percent bonus. If I close six households in, in, in whatever amount of time now, incidentally, Tyson guy at a CFP, right? So he had a fiduciary responsibility to these people. And I said, pardon my French when I say how shitty is that? And he said, what do you mean?

And I said, dude, you can't service these people. You're not set up for it. And he said, yeah 2% and I was talking with a [00:04:00] couple of guys about a podcast, a couple of guys that produce podcasts for trying to convince me to do one. And I called him and I was like, all right, I know what we have to do.

And it is all about the client relationship and the transition of our industry. So I feel like that's, that's a nice segue into talking about the book here. Talk about your experience when you were in Florida and and then moving up to Lake Geneva and, and B before, before you really found this total relationship model.

Tyson Ray: Yeah, it's I think I quickly learned a lot of things I didn't want to do and then observed a lot of other people doing. And part of it too, is coming into the business right out of college in the late nineties, the stock era, and everybody's making money, but me and the hottest new ideas, those gross stocks of the nineties.

And I was trying to figure out how am I going to differentiate myself? Yeah, why me versus somebody that's been doing this for however long they've been doing this and literally the Pensacola experience. There were some great mentors there and I really think and it's why I wrote the book.

I think it's why you do the podcast. I really think at the core people are good.[00:05:00] They're just trained wrong or they're pursuing what they think they need to be instead of who they really are. And if anything, the podcast or this book is to say, Hey, it's there's an easier way.

And man, it just feels so much better. That's the biggest thing because coming out of Pensacola, it was like, literally whole calling people. It was, if you bought so many shares of the utility company, you would pay the average utility bill. And it was just trying to, it was trying to make a living. And I literally left Pensacola, Florida and the beginnings of my career to basically move back home for no other reason than I could live, right?

Grandma's garden had food in it and grandma needed someone to help the family needed somebody to move home to make sure that she was taking her diabetes medicine and was okay in the mornings. And I was like, man, I can live for free and I don't have to have the stress of having to sell to make a living.

And I. I think that's where the industry is still just struggling with how you bring in new advisors and do the right thing and sell these practices and do the right thing and all the stuff that goes into that. And [00:06:00] the freedom that came from that was all of a sudden just that's when the relationship started.

That's when all of a sudden it wasn't a sale anymore. That's all of a sudden where, yeah, you can sit down with somebody who's got 000 and help them. And a lot of times helping them is to basically tell them all the things they need to do before they can become the client instead of getting your 2 percent commission because you met some quota.

Yeah. So anyway, it's been it's been quite a journey. And in 2012, I wrote a book called your world impact as a financial advisor and try to take a stab at this. And if that was the 30, 000 foot take on the industry and what I was trying to communicate, this is much more of the how to, this is much more gets into the weeds of what is, I think, what is the client really wanting.

And what is the advisor really wanting to provide and how can you take out all the noise of what the industry says you should be doing and build those relationships? 

Charlie Van Derven: Yeah. I I almost feel bad for people who come up in a, in a wire house environment. Something that I've said, repeated [00:07:00] time and time again is even talking to independent advisors with an IBD or, or RIAs that came through that channel.

I used to say they got a good training program, and I don't even, I don't agree with myself anymore. It, you speak to the cold calling days. And certainly, those of a certain age have gone through that. And, 300 index cards a day.

And, listen, we've, I knew it as a salesperson serving the industry. Certainly. I knew it as, knew it from advisors as well. Say the magic thing, ask them this question right after you ask them that question. It was all about so here's the deal. I feel like it's bad training at this point.

And I'm sure there's some great training in there. Don't get me wrong, but I feel like it's bad training at this point, simply because when you build a relationship based on this magic formula of words that you say, it's almost, we grew up in a book called spin selling and there's some value in it, but I hate the acronym, like spinning somebody into doing something.

And Oh my gosh, man. So now we coach advisors. Understand [00:08:00] you connect with people right now that are going to need your help in a year and a half. Be there for them now, and they'll be your client then. Yep. Yeah. So very different mindset as we're talking about mindsets today. You talk about breaking the mold.

And that was this transition that you made from picking stocks. And you talk about breaking a lot of molds, the FOMO mold, the appeasement mold, let's talk about that transition of breaking this advisor mold. 

Tyson Ray: Yeah, I the late 2000s and before the tech, before the financial crisis, I was realizing that I was having conversations with clients about the relationship and what, when I would sit down with somebody, I'd ask, what do you want?

What do you, why are we here? What do you want to get out of this conversation? And it wasn't, they never asked, hey, can I see a pie chart that shows me my asset allocation? Or can I see the. Yeah. Yeah. The percentage difference between small cap or mid cap, or what my waiting is for value or how exposed I [00:09:00] am to the international markets or what I have.

It's just they never asked for that. What they asked for is, can I buy the car? Can I do the home improvement? Can I take the vacation and early in the business? And then, and by the way, the industry spent like. Continually spends all this money and God bless AI coming with it to, to produce all this stuff that no clients ever asked for, and it's all performance driven or trying to explain something that's intangible into a tangible way.

And what I was starting to realize was, is I was having these great meetings and then I felt like I almost had to interrupt the meeting and then pull out all this. Stuff and then fill their kitchen trash can with it to explain to them in pictures and graphs how I was supposedly adding value when I realized, no, the value add was here's the car, here's the money.

And it allowed me to shift away from feeling like I had to get their permission for portfolio or individual position decisions. And that's when we started moving more into investing in models. And I moved away from talking [00:10:00] and discretion and moved away from having to talk about the portfolio, but talk about what do you need that doesn't need to be in the markets.

And that moved, that then helped start protecting against the hot idea. It protected against the, everybody wants some of this and it's trying to help clients realize what they need and don't need. And for the most part, it was the reverse psychology is a mindset around. I wake up every day from that point till today and into the future wanting to know.

What do you need that doesn't need to be in our models, which is totally different mindset that most advisors are like, Oh, here. I'm going to open up that 200, 300, 000 account. So I get my 2%. So I can put more money in my models. And it's Oh no. I don't want anything in my models that the clients are going to need in the next 12 to 24 months that they've identified.

Cause when the markets get shellacked and clients psychology kicks in, they will. Quantify when their million dollar account goes down by 50 grand and that was the car they wanted to buy. They put the emotional, like they even see the color of the car [00:11:00] in the loss in their portfolio value and now they want to dump it at your doorstep.

And what I found is if you can get in front of that. find out what the client's needs are. So now it's just a fluctuation of the portfolio and they don't emotionally attach it to anything they need. It's an easier job. You don't have complaints or people upset. They don't like markets going up and down, but to the extent that it's sitting in cash for what they need.

Oh, and that I'll lend it. And that's, it's so much easier. Like we were talking this whole world is caught up in the stress of trying to, and stress comes from trying to control things that you don't control. And man, All these advisors are trying to control markets and performance and client's expectations.

And can I show the pie chart, right? Oh, can I have you fill out this questionnaire? And if you, and then based on the questions are answered, creates this score. That score creates this model. And it's just yeah, but wait, does that model take into consideration what the client's objectives are for the next 20 or 30 years or what their needs are to buy a car in the next six to 12 months or.

What is interest rates doing? Or what's the valuation of an asset class? Because these compliance is trying to hold [00:12:00] the industry in a stagnant, constant textbook environment that it's not, never has been, never will be. And so anyway, it's just been, it's, it. For me, it was therapy, like putting it back together in a book.

And it's the passion I have of just, it's not more clients. It's trying to help more people, help more clients. And if we can help an advisor, we can help hundreds of people. That's 

exactly, 

Charlie Van Derven: I agree with you a hundred percent. And our listenership typically is that younger advisor. And we're trying to teach people how to become independent, right.

Or maybe more than that, give them the confidence to become independent. So they're not beholden. To quotas. So they're not beholden to specific products that, the company's leveraged in or whatever. And and it's a great book and I'll repeat the total relationship. Tyson Ray.

Like it's a really good book for young advisors who are looking to figure out what the ideal advisor client relationship looks like. 

Tyson Ray: Yeah it's yeah, it's been a lot of fun [00:13:00] and And I appreciate the feet, plus you write this stuff and you live it all day long. You're like, is this really a book?

Yeah. 

Charlie Van Derven: Yeah. It's it really, it really, I one of the concepts that you brought up, which seems like a simple concept, but I want you to elaborate on it. Is that there's the, we're talking about mindset before we hit the record button here. What's that mindset between riches and wealth?

What is if you can speak to that a little bit, because I think it leads to, the coaching and the partnership that we're going to get into here in a second. Riches and wealth Tyson, tell us about it. 

Tyson Ray: Yeah. So I, riches is riches. It's basically, it's the focus is on the money.

The focus is on more money. That's the riches is never enough necessarily. Riches from an advisor standpoint, riches is how many assets you have under management. What's your revenues riches is the guy that. Got the 2 percent extra pay. Cause he brought on that smaller accounts when he really should be paying attention to what his time and energy and efforts are.

So riches is the game of more and riches never satisfy riches is going back to it's [00:14:00] never enough. And then on the client side, it's the client's Oh, I remember a client once it's I would call him. It's we just happened to cross the 4 million mark. And it was a milestone and it was great.

And his exact words were, okay, I want five. That's an example of riches. And it's funny because I can think of that client 20 years later in wealth. I've gotten them off. Rich's mindset. Wealth is his lake house. Wealth was helping him convinced to spend like 200, 000 to buy this RV to park out front of this Iowa State football games.

Cause it's what he always wanted to do and trying to help him realize, Hey, it's not going to be worth zero, but a couple of you enjoy it and then we'll sell it for when we sell it forward and take them right off. And wealth is helping take it forward. Money, which is a unit of currency. It's a black ink on white paper.

It is, it's a tool and turning it into the things that you've wanted in your lifetime for the reasons you saved up to have that money and it's on the advisor side, it's shifting from [00:15:00] not a bigger practice dollar wise, but a bigger impact in clients lives. Ironically, you'd be create a huge practice in the process, but it's not the focus on more money.

It's focusing, it's literally focusing on giving clients permission to enjoy what they have. 

Charlie Van Derven: Such a shift, such a mindset shift. You look at, the industry wants to quantify everything, right? What's your number? I don't remember. I can't even, I watched golf on a Sunday. I don't even, I can't even remember whose commercial it was, but what's your retirement number, right?

What's your risk tolerance number, right? When, to your point. What's important to you, right? You want to send your kids to college. Awesome. Let's plan for that. You want that RV outside the Iowa state football game. Awesome. Let's plan for that. And I agree with you, right?

I, in fact, when you said it, I wrote it down. Rich has never satisfied. And I'll probably, those of you who are listening, can't see this, but I've got a whiteboard behind me and it's a digital marketing concept on the whiteboard. And it's there because I have to explain it to a lot of people throughout the day.

And so just nice visual, but I'm going to write it back there too. Like rich has never [00:16:00] satisfied you. That's really. That's that's pretty cool. I like 

Tyson Ray: that. We're seeking clients to have, we're seeking clients to have what we call funded contentment. And if we get them there and you get to the point of contentment, contentment brings less anxiety, less worry, less stress.

It brings to some extent, a calming aspect. And in the state of funded contentment for the client, the advisor can calm down. Cause I think a lot of advisors panic in the markets themselves and cause more damage than the clients do themselves. For sure. But when you know, you've done the job of setting aside, what shouldn't be in the market.

And you can get clients to this funded contentment. It's just a, it is just a relationship journey that just brings joy and love and peace and all the things that are the fruit of what relationships are. And it's not models. It's not money. It's not asset allocation. It's not risk scores. It's not some pie chart.

It's not some Monte Carlo projection of what the future is going to hold. It's just, how [00:17:00] are you and what do we need to do to relieve your worries or anxieties about what you want to do in your life that has nothing to do with the world's markets that you can't control. Okay. 

Charlie Van Derven: So now we've laid the foundation and I love your passion about it.

Tyson. These aren't just words on a, these aren't just words in a book, man. You live this, the passion exudes itself. I love it. So for those advisors who are listening to you right now, or who are reading your book, right? You talk a lot about partnership. You talk a lot about coach. How do they go from this trained relationship that is about the charts and about the returns and about the riches?

How do you start to transition your client relationships from that to that of a partnership of a trusted partner of a trusted 

Tyson Ray: coach? Yeah. So on the client side. We will have them come in and we'll ask them, there's some screening on the front end, but basically what we're asking is why are we here?

And when they explain whatever that is, we explain back that to become a client [00:18:00] is to build a relationship here. And part of that process that we take clients through is we're going to take our time because relationships aren't built, we're not here to sell anything. And we're going to go double check and make sure everything's right.

And in the process, it starts with going through questionnaires that are not questionnaires of risk tolerance. They're just open ended questions, right? Are you going to retire in the house that you're in? Are you going to do any additions to the house that you're in? If I was honest, we start with family 1st, because money flows from parents and goes to kids or loved ones.

And so how are our folks? And in fact, we're most often starting every conversation we have with has the family because if mom and this happens way too often these days, if mom just tripped and. Her hip or got diagnosed with stage four cancer or Parkinson's or whatever the issue is, all of a sudden, everything that was supposed to happen on the call needs to stop.

Because all of a sudden families 1st. And so we [00:19:00] want to take the time to understand what's happening in the family. Then understand what's happening for their kids to the extent that they have any understand what's going on in their occupation. Understand what's going on, which in retirements, obviously, your longest occupation, but it's going through the the feelings of family.

How you feel about your work, how you feel about retirement, how you feel about your recreations and your hobbies and what you're doing in your life and your health. That's a big one. What are we doing with some of the purpose of life or the volunteering or the way you're giving back?

And so we the form that we like to say clients lives are taking hap, they all have feelings around them and goals around them, objectives around them. And then we back in, okay, what's the, how's the house. How's the roof? How's the furnace? How's the, what's the home improvement? Are we going to do that?

I can't, number of clients I have that's guys, I want to do this. And it's here's the money. Now, do you really want to do it? Because it goes from a wish to a, are you going to actually do it? And and helping people find how to fund these things to get to that funded content that I just talked about [00:20:00] is just a process that we go through.

And what I found is that if we spend the first. 90 minutes with a client understanding how they feel about all these things and how they feel about their house, their home improvements, their cars, their major purchases, boats, whatever that is that they have. We then stop and say, great, our next step is to go through the process of then seeing all the finances.

That are going to fund or be a part of how making all these feelings and facts coming together to create a relationship that we can try and help advise in. And it's never been for gosh, 20 years, some proposal, like I'm not pulling anything up. There's no performance. There's no past, whatever. It's just Hey, the markets are going to create returns cash creates returns.

There's all these investments that create returns. We got to figure out what is the return you need to accomplish everything you just said you wanted to do. And it's just it's a conversation. It's it's not finance. 

Charlie Van Derven: How do we, so here's the question that swims in the back of my mind.

We've got these advisors who are focused on what the industry has taught them to be [00:21:00] focused on. They're listening to you. They're saying, yeah, great. How do I take this relationship? That I've had for five years with a client that has been performance based, which is probably a really difficult time right now.

How do we take that and actually start to move these people to toward away from riches and towards wealth? 

Tyson Ray: Going back to the yeah, totally. So we've acquired seven or eight practices over the last 25 years. And so we've had to do this. Usually we've waited until the senior advisors retired out of respect for that senior advisor that didn't want to make that pivot.

I've had some junior advisors that we've had to retrain or retool. When you're ready to commit, like diving in a cold pool of water, the cold plunge, right? We would sit down with a client and say, Charlie, we're sitting down today and we're going to discover whether or not we're extending you an invitation to become a client of ours going forward, because we're going to completely change the way we interact with our clients and we're extending you an invitation to become one of those [00:22:00] clients.

And so part of this journey we're going to go on is decide, are we a fit? And if we're not, we'll find you another advisor. And they're like a deer in headlights, right? They're also like, what do you mean? And it totally shifts this clientele that thinks they get to call you and tell you what they're doing.

I don't get to tell my dentist what to do. I don't get to tell my doctor what to do. I often don't get to tell my attorney or my accountant what to do. They're professionals to tell me what to do. And I'm shifting and it's the same with the clients. I'm, I want to shift our focus to how I can help advise you better and get away from this get away from what I think the industry is 

Charlie Van Derven: getting wrong.

Yeah. And I was going to say that, that's the flip side. When you take a junior advisor. And you show them that this is our approach, that's the flip side of where they've come from, right? They're trained to, they're, I hate to use the word because it feels dirty and it is dirty.

They're trained as asset gatherers, right? And [00:23:00] and so when your whole life is about finding the next client. And then you come into a place where the mindset is 50, 100%, 180 degrees off of that, is, are you the right client for us? And, the firm and the firm with shareholders and bottom lines, they need new assets.

They need new assets all the time. You run your own RIA. It doesn't have to be that way. 

Tyson Ray: I don't know how I want to phrase this because it's coming to me for the first time. So here we get to, you can help me with this, but I feel like the advisors. I know that the more you focus on assets, the more an ass you are.

I love it. Yeah. 

Charlie Van Derven: All right. I'll put that. I'll ask chat. I'll ask chat GPT for its top five. 

Tyson Ray: But the, it, because it's so the antithesis, the relationship. 

Charlie Van Derven: I'm writing it down because I will, we'll find some, we'll find a way to say it elegantly. 

Tyson Ray: I promise. Yeah it's just, it's, it is a it's the wrong focus.

And it's the difference [00:24:00] between I have someone that told me they're becoming I was this guy yesterday ran into their kind of extended friend and they basically said, Hey, we want to become clients. I was at work. And I just said, here, you could go to go do this, go to forum. com and log in and sign up and give us some information.

They said, why? And she said, my mother in law's husband passed away. She got the life insurance money. She wanted to pay off her house and her current advisor suggested she didn't and that she invested it. And it's the, it just goes back to, and the why, because he gets paid to keep assets under management.

And I can't tell you the number of clients I'm like, nope, debt free. Let's pay this thing off. You'll, and my best, my favorite line or two things. One, I'm not paid to tell you that. Yeah. And two, let's flip it on its head. Let's assume for a second, your house has paid off or no, let's go take out more debt.

On your house and then give it to me to invest it. [00:25:00] Cause that's effectively what you're saying. That's right. And when they like, Oh my gosh. And then I asked him like a month later after they bought the house, how does that feel when you walk in and you pay it's paid for, Oh my gosh. And it's that's the difference between focusing on the relationship versus the assets and the revenues and all this other stuff.

It's no, it's that's a losing game. 

Charlie Van Derven: Yeah. What a great feeling. Taxes and insurance. That's it. No more mortgage. So that's awesome. Let's talk before we wrap Tyson. Let's talk a little bit about total relationship investing, right? Cause what we're talking about here is building a total client relationship based on wealth, not riches based on.

And I love the funded contentment line that you use. That's really, like what's going to make this person content and it's not a dollar figure. I love that. So let's talk about total, total relationship funding. And then I want to our investing rather. And then I want to talk to you about total relationship care before we wrap here.

Tyson Ray: Yeah. So the total relationship investing we call it TR vest is a couple of things, one, [00:26:00] it Bob Dunwoody was a coach years back when we got started in the business and he had this great saying, take your, if your entire practice, all of your assets under management, we're in cash, where should All these advisors start with where they are.

All the clients come in and we start with where they are. And part of the total relationship investment standpoint, I'll tell a client, when you come in, I'm looking at everything you have, I'm turning it into cash, and then I'm asking myself, where should it be? Not where is it? And then. What you find is the total relationship process starts with and this was the combination of getting my CFP and becoming a practitioner there, and then eventually getting my SEMA and going, oh my gosh time out.

The, some of this stuff actually matters. First and foremost, it's called a capital market assumption. What is that? That is a company's or institution or research's guess of what the future holds. And the key word is guess because no one knows. [00:27:00] But the total relationship doesn't, a relationship doesn't focus on one.

That's not, you don't have a relationship with one. So total relationship investing is taking several, we take four actually different firms, capital market assumptions, put them in a blender and pull out an average. And why? Because any one of them can be wrong. But if three or four of these institutional managers are putting out capital market assumptions, and by the way, the capital market assumptions coming into COVID would have kept you from being overweighted in the market.

Capital market assumptions, a blend of them especially, coming out of COVID would have told you were going to have a negative return and fixed in for a couple years. Guess what? That's what you got. That, that's a tool to help you navigate this relationship of risk and return. That's a capital market assumption.

From there, you actually then can make decisions without emotion, without risk categories or risk numbers to come up with, where should I be deploying long term capital that clients don't need in the next 12 to 24 months as [00:28:00] we define it. And then build models around that. And it's not a model for every one of your clients.

This idea that you can customize each client's portfolio is a facade unless you only have four or five clients. Cause you can't make custom decisions for hundreds of clients. You can't make decisions on when to raise money for clients when you have a hundred or 200 clients that do it for them. Each one of their accounts is its own separate model.

And that's was done with these point of having everything in cash and having then where should it be is because your whole practice should probably be viewed as an asset allocation model, right? For every and then cash, right? So what am I exposing myself to risk? For my entire book and what should that be doing given the historical returns of the equities over long periods of time, probably should be invested in equities, which isn't what anybody wants, right?

And so that total relationship process just takes research from several different places, blends it together to give you an asset allocation guide. Then same thing, all these firms then give you asset [00:29:00] allocation models to choose from. All right, we blend them together and what's funny about it is I've had to come up with a way and that's what total relationship investing does to convince myself why I shouldn't do anything because what tends to happen by blending three or four companies, firms together, and this just happened here in the first quarter is one took 8 percent out of the United States markets and put it international and literally another one took 8 percent out of the international market and put it back in the U.

S. Blended together. What does it tell you to do? Nothing. Go on vacation. And often nothing is the right thing to do. 

Charlie Van Derven: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Who knows? 

Tyson Ray: Okay, so relationship investing is by design, trying to show yourself why you don't need to do anything, paying attention for when the markets, all you can know is the markets are at their all time high.

They're below their all time high. That's it. And if the markets are at or near their all time high, that's the time to raise money for clients in the next 12 to 24 months. It's not when they want to do it because it's at the all time high, they want to leave it there and run. No, your job is to fund the future.[00:30:00] 

And you get to do so by paying attention to fundamentals and not getting caught up in the market trends and the hot ideas, and everyone's got their little custom this and custom that, and I call it the ego investing. It's really simple, and doing it at a practice level allows you to create consistency, whether they're the million dollar client or the 10 million dollar client, they're all getting some of the same executions on when we're raising money, because we're doing it based on where the markets are at, not what, not when I'm meeting with them.

Not when they call in, it allows you to add value across the board and build in that value. It helps that relationship. 

Charlie Van Derven: Now tell me about total relationship care. These are two facets of the total relationship. What's the 

Tyson Ray: care side of it? Yeah, and I got pushed back on the word care and I really think that's what it is because effectively the relationship we have with clients is for their lifetimes, like you're going to handhold them through their care years.

Really? Our end, it is our, the care part is caring enough to monitor things.[00:31:00] Like I said, how are your parents? How's the car? You told me at a hundred thousand miles, we're getting another car. What's the mileage? We track mileage on cars because those little 000 vehicles, right? If you get a call from a client and you're surprised they're buying a vehicle, you don't have a total relationship with that client.

That or they're a spendthrift, but most people aren't buying a hundred thousand, 50, 000 vehicles on a whim. They've think most people have a rhythm of how they buy cars. That is almost like clockwork number of years, number of miles or till it's dead. It's caring enough to ask those questions. It's caring enough.

Did you do the home improvement? Did you take that vacation? It's caring enough to ask, Hey, if you had extra money, what would you do with it? And then when that extra money shows up, it's giving them permission to do it. It's just a full 

Charlie Van Derven: understanding. It is. Don't our clients deserve that? 

Tyson Ray: Yes. But the care part of it is building a system using technology or I don't [00:32:00] care how you do it, but it's like my dentist cares enough.

To have me schedule the next appointment, six months out, the total relationship care is to build a service system to maintain and continue that relationship. Because without asking new questions and having new conversations and new interactions, relationships die. Yeah, 

Charlie Van Derven: There's amazing tools on the market that make it simple.

You still have to, you still have to be involved in the relationship, but you've got tools that guide everything you do on a daily, weekly, monthly, and annual basis. There's no excuse for not having it quite frankly. Yep. Tyson, man, I love your passion. I really do listen, you're talking to a guy now, you get to meet a lot of clients.

I get to meet with a lot of advisors, right? So in 25 years, I can't imagine how many tens of thousands of advisors I've spoken to. And so I don't run into people with your passion very often. Your passion's in the right place. I've met a lot of people who want to make a lot of money. Listen if this industry didn't pay well, if [00:33:00] it didn't create a good opportunity to make a good living, we'd probably go find a different way to help people.

There's, that's part of it and that's okay. And that's great. That's great. Your passion for helping your clients is commendable. It sounds like a stupid word. It's really, it's awesome to see, if I can say it that way. 

Tyson Ray: In the past, I think the passion comes from and that's what I want to spread is if I could help them have that total relationship, change that mindset, have that different type of conversation, I think they would have the joy or the energy that comes out of them that becomes the passion to 

Charlie Van Derven: do it.

Yeah, a little bit and get up and go every day. And, yeah, that's awesome. I want to ask you a couple of questions before we wrap up here, Tyson. Number one, you came, you came out of a captive environment. I don't know if you were a captive advisor and I don't want to name any firms or anything.

I don't want to say any compliance. Were you independent with the big firm that you were with? 

Tyson Ray: Are we? No, I wasn't. I came out, I came up from an old firm within coming out of St. Louis. I was, I, oh my God, I got acquired. I [00:34:00] spent a month in sales training right back in the day. Got acquired, watched watched that transpire, stayed a couple more years.

In 2014, I left out and joined and affiliated in such a way that I'm, that I am, I have that independence. And yet I was trying to do this within that broker dealer. I think you can do it in the broker dealer, but. It just goes back to if you're, in my opinion, if you're working at a firm that somebody can take a pencil and change your payout and then incentivize you to do more things you wouldn't have done otherwise to give you back what they took away you're not, you're, you have a conflict that your clients don't want you to have.

Yeah, 

Charlie Van Derven: I love that. So as you made that transition and especially as you started form advisors we've got listeners that are, I want to say maybe young in the industry, maybe older in the industry and thinking about we're not in the right environment anymore. We need to be in a space where it's RIA.

And, we've got this autonomy and the ability to act on behalf of our clients, instead of the firm. What's a couple of things, one [00:35:00] thing that you look back on and maybe you didn't even know it at the time, but you did it really well in setting up the new firm or form advisors. 

Tyson Ray: Yeah it's, it is the place to, it's the CRM, it's the place where you capture data and building in building places where I think way too many advisors are keeping way too much information in their head.

And and it's, no, it's like the technology, if you don't even have to type it anymore, you can press a button, it'll be recorded for you. We just had our state regulators in here, it was the first time in 25 years I got visited by those wonderful individuals, and it was just like, every question they have is bloop, here's what the conversation was, this is what, and and you didn't have to you had the proof on top of it timestamp, all that stuff, so I think too many advisors try and do that cheap or don't do it consistently.

And it's just no, this is like breathing air, right? Document the meeting, use the technology and capture that information. And it makes it more valuable to the practice and the team members because somebody else [00:36:00] can come in and see it. And the clients are used to it. Whether it's the dentist or the doctor or the attorney, right?

There's someone else in the room taking notes. There's somebody typing on a computer. And so it is that's the biggest mistake I think advisors make when they're the way they run their practices, period. 

Charlie Van Derven: Yeah, I agree with you. I talked to an RA today. I won't name any, no identifiers. I said, what CRM do you use?

And she said I guess I just gave an identifier, but oh I don't, what do you mean? It should have, there's not a very many clients, but yeah, no CRM tried to use, I won't name names on a, try to use this one, I didn't want to take all the time to enter all the initial data.

Yeah, you're making a mistake. Tyson, would you as. As the author of Total Relationship is a guy who's built a really successful practice in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. If we got any listeners that, that, want to contact you, ask you a few questions about your journey. And I don't know if you're ever adding advisors, but maybe somebody trying to make a breakaway would you be open to answering a phone call or answering an 

Tyson Ray: email?[00:37:00] 

Yeah, the easiest way to touch base, we use LinkedIn quite a bit. I think that's a pretty easy way to come find us, message me there. And yeah you I I love giving back. I'll have a, I'll have a meeting with anybody for, 30 minutes to an hour, depending on what the situation is and try and give them some guidance to set them on their way.

And there are quite there are quite a few advisors that are in this transition. They either buying a practice or taking a practice over or trying to start off on their own that the, but whether it's a total relationship process, whether it's a total relationship, investing, or the care or the technology, we've really built a back office that we feel is unique in the industry from a value standpoint and an impact standpoint.

But can it's like here, you don't have to reinvent the wheel, take it, make it your own. You don't want to jump in and be a part of ours. Fine. I don't care. It's just like, how can we just do more of this for the people that need it? 

Charlie Van Derven: That's awesome, dude. I I'm very happy to know you Tyson. Thank you for I don't know, four or five months ago.

I think somebody on your team reached out to see if we could talk about the book. I'm grateful that they did. [00:38:00] I'm thrilled to know you, you're doing it right. And Tyson Ray, thank you so much for being my guest on RA collective today. Yeah. My pleasure. So yeah, if you want to reach out to Tyson Ray on LinkedIn his practices form wealth advisor.

I shouldn't even say practice. It's much, practice in business. It's all good. His business is Forum Wealth Advisors Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. And listen, dude, I got family in Plymouth, Wisconsin, right? You should agree. I don't even have family in green Bay anymore. It's hard to say, but I got family in Plymouth, Wisconsin, so I might drop on your doorstep one day.

You never know. Hey, love to see you. Awesome, man. We'll make it happen. Tyson. Thank you so much for being here. And for everybody who joined us to listen to this this episode of RA collective, listen, there's a lot of ways you can spend your time. So we appreciate you hanging out with us for a half hour or whatever we did Tyson.

I don't know, man. There you go. All right. Thank you. Have an awesome afternoon, Tyson and and to the listeners. Thank you. Thanks.