Latest / Financial Planner Search / The Boutique Advantage: Managing Fear and Trust with Allen Harris | Financial Planner Search
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- Gregory Wilnau: Alan Harris, how are you doing today? Allen Harris: Fabulous. How are you? Thanks for having me. Gregory Wilnau: I am doing better now that I'm talking to you, Great to have you. Allen Harris: Way to butter me up. Gregory Wilnau: All right. Yeah. All right. Let's let's dive right into this. So ⁓ tell us about ⁓ what you do and what you specialize in. Allen Harris: Sure, Probably a lot of your followers, a lot of your listeners will know the structure. We're a registered investment advisor, which means we do a lot of financial things that most prospective clients don't know we do until they start working with us. Investment basics as the foundation. And then you get into financial planning, estate planning, Medicare, Social Security. All those things are a lot of times on people's websites. It's sort of this search engine optimization tool that's there, but it's things that we actually get into for as far as advising and planning on. We try to be bit of a, as much of a one-stop shop as possible. Gregory Wilnau: Okay. So when I start these, like to better understand kind of who you are, but a lot of podcasts, you know, they'll talk about themselves in the beginning too much. And if you're like me, you're just like, ⁓ my gosh, get to the point, right? ⁓ But I do think it's important to understand more about, you know, how you think, right? Because this is an important thing I think that people want to know, want to learn more about. So. Allen Harris: same. Gregory Wilnau: It maybe indulged me for a second and helped me understand maybe what led you to choose this career. Allen Harris: Yeah, well, I can tie that into also what I do and sort of the way I think about people's households. And it's very balance sheet oriented. You know, my father was a butcher, but he was very much so an investor. On the debt side, you know, series E bonds for those of us who are, you know, 50 or something can remember back. Maybe you have to be 70 to remember that kind of stuff. Then, know, the stock market and, you know, he would show me what we owed on the mortgage and he would show me what he had invested and it in it being, in addition to tossing the ball out back, that was sort of our bonding element. So that was something that we had, even as a child, like nine years old, growing up. And so I continue to think about our clients' households in that way, which is deep connection on the communication for finances, but also thinking about it the balance sheet side, because it's not just investments, but it's also what you owe. And I think that allows me to be sort of empathetic when I'm talking to families. Gregory Wilnau: Yeah, I can see how that would help you out. I could really see how that would help you out. I think that's important, too, because you have the investment side, but you also have the human side. ⁓ OK, so let's talk about your pops for a little bit, and then I promise we'll move on, because I think a lot of us are inspired or at least guided in some way by our parents. ⁓ Was he that specific person earlier in your career, maybe, who helped change how you approach your work? ⁓ What did that relationship maybe, how did that directly impact or help you think about maybe how you approach your clients? Does that question make sense? Allen Harris: Well, yes it does. But I wonder just how much of that is subconscious as a, and some of it's conscious because you see how hard your parents work and they're taking every single bit of overtime they can get. Like I said, my father was a butcher, so it's not like he could afford to take the weekends off because we had to pay for some bills. And back in the day, you're lucky you had that one family trip per year sort of thing. And at least if you were like lower middle class. So. Gregory Wilnau: Yeah. Allen Harris: Yeah, I saw my mom working late hours and I'm not necessarily seeing each other all the time because their shifts would be different. So, yeah, I saw them working hard. I think part of that is going to be conscious, which is I should work hard. And part of it is, you know, it's okay to make some sacrifices here and there to build for your family. And that family can be literally yours by blood or marriage. And it can be the families that you're working Gregory Wilnau: Yeah, I love that. So encouraging that personal connection. Okay, so I'm sure we'll talk about this ⁓ more organically as we go through, but help me understand more about the people that you serve. ⁓ Maybe what are some of the ways that you get to know your clients as individuals so that maybe you can tailor your recommendations to their unique situation? help me understand more about maybe the relationships that you and your team have with your clients and why that's important. Allen Harris: Relationship is absolutely the right word. And make no mistake about it, there's some numbers that have to play into it. But the numbers just really are part of the levers that have to get into those more emotional conversations, behavioral conversations, the of the, I think it's seven why's that Simon Sinek tries to ask, can it get to the root of like, what are you really thinking? What is this for? And we may not be. Gregory Wilnau: Yeah. Allen Harris: that annoying and ask the client why seven times in a row. But when someone does come in to talk to a financial advisor in the first place, it's not too hard to get to that place of relationship in a fairly short period of time. And what I mean by short period of time is three months, one year, as opposed to five years, 10 years with a colleague. Let me be more specific about that. Someone's gonna come in to... And there's a reason why they came to us. There's typically money in motion in some sort. Maybe it's an inheritance, maybe they sold the business. Oftentimes, they just retired and they almost won't permission to retire. They don't know what they don't know. And they don't know if they can replicate that income and go through retirement without running out of money. And what it means, they have some fear. And so they are self-selecting to come in to say, and they don't always admit the fear and they may not. They may not admit the fear to themselves. They may not say it out loud, it's there usually somewhere. And so they're self-selecting to come to us and say, I'm going to financially address in front of you and show some vulnerability. And so from there, all we have to do is be careful, not be... We can, as professionals, know things that are obvious to us, that are never going to be obvious to somebody else. And we might know it in an instant. and they might not know it from reading it through a textbook. And we have to present that to them not in a, well, why didn't you know that fashion? But, ⁓ we understand this problem. We've seen it a thousand times before. We have a solution for it. Let's go ahead and explain it to you in ways that you can understand. We don't use that language, of course. We just try to be non-jargony. And understand why, again Simon Sinek, why you want this to happen. And because... Gregory Wilnau: Mm. Yeah, absolutely. Allen Harris: Quite frankly, you may be explaining a problem. You may be reaching for a solution because you're aware of that solution. But if we understand we're trying to figure out the problem is, we might actually have another solution that's even better. And going through them coming in, self-selecting, being vulnerable, and telling us about what's going on, we can then have conversations with them about, are you really trying to solve? And it's not usually, truly a money movement, a money leaver. You know, someone might come in lots of times and say, you know, I just want returns. All I want like, well, you know, but why? If you really just want returns that are better, buy some levered portfolio and margin, and you're going to get that assuming the market's going to continue giving up and you don't need us. So what are you really trying to get to? So the relationship can be easy because they're making it easy. I knew you're already coming to you and saying, I want to trust you. I want to have that relationship just. Gregory Wilnau: Mm. Mm. Allen Harris: Handle me with care. Gregory Wilnau: Yeah, absolutely. You said that people often come in there some fear there, which is natural. ⁓ Is one of the ways you help them overcome that fear? Do you think that might be asking the seven whys? Because sometimes I think this is from my personal experiences. ⁓ Often fear is there because we don't really understand something. through asking the the seven whys, do you think you help them get greater levels of clarity that might help remove some of that fear? say, know, sun light's the best disinfectant. Any thoughts on that? Allen Harris: The quick answer is yes. And the why in this discussion is almost more metaphorical because you're never gonna have a good conversation with someone if you just keep saying why, why, why. You're gonna get kind of annoyed with you. So you do want to get there and you do want to understand them. You people have, money means different things to different people and oftentimes wherever that definition of money is to them gets to that root of that concern and When it comes down to it, I think you nailed it. We have fear when there's something that we don't understand. And that's why throughout history, we've tried to assign a narrative to something that's going on, because if we feel that we can describe or rationalize something, we become less fearful. And if we can have that conversation with someone, fantastic, let's let you be less fearful. But it can't just stop there. We can't only be therapists. Gregory Wilnau: Absolutely. Allen Harris: We then have to figure out what financial levers and financial tools do we use to solve for that fear. But yeah, it's very behavioral. Gregory Wilnau: Okay, maybe we could. Yeah, I completely agree. ⁓ Let's talk maybe about ⁓ when a client first comes to you. Maybe let's talk about somebody who you I don't want to say turned away or maybe you had that conversation. You realize they weren't the right fit or they weren't ready yet. ⁓ Is that something you'd be open to talk about? What are some of the maybe the things that are like this person? might need to go a different direction or maybe they're not ready yet. Does that question make sense? I just want to understand more about how you think about the types of people that are best to work Allen Harris: Yeah, yeah, I in- in- And generally there's sort of two groups that immediately don't we don't recognize as a good fit. And everyone has a different business model and it doesn't mean that they're a bad person or a bad fit for somebody else. It just doesn't fit into the types of clients that we might work with. And so, for example, we're not great with credit card debt reconciliation. We do have people come to us for things like that. and they're not a great fit for us because our typical minimum fee is going to be about six grand. And if you're trying to manage your way out of $20,000 in debt, we're just not going to be a great fit for you, even from a monetary standpoint. So we'll do pro bono. We'll give you the advice that we can. And if the depth of your help is beyond whatever we can offer pro bono, we've got a couple of organizations that we can matchmaker you with and we absolutely are happy to. And then on the other side of it tends to be more on the investment side where the side of it would stand a great fit. Now I, know, like anybody, anybody who's an investor, I try my best to do well in the market. I try to get cute in being the right sector or being the right asset class and get out when things are looking bad. You we're trying to do that. But we feel that the best, the best alpha generation to use our our language, the best way we can add value to a client isn't just in the returns, but on the planning side of it. And so if someone comes to us and they're very demanding about how we're going to be beating the market every single year, yeah, we'll have the conversation. But if it's something that we remain fixated on, probably will say, listen, we can work with you, but you have to have a different mindset. Gregory Wilnau: Hmm. Allen Harris: And if we can't come to an agreement of having a different mindset, then it's probably not gonna work as well. Because for our perspective, yes, return is super important. mean, but it comes with, it starts with, we want our people to work with people who want to keep the money they have. Every dollar that someone has, we want to keep it as much as possible by mitigating taxes. whether it's from us doing tax filing or Roth IRA conversions or tax law selling or entity selections or... Gregory Wilnau: Mm-hmm. Allen Harris: the right investment and the right count. That's something that's very meaningful to us. And so it's not just about returns. But yes, you keep those dollars, you absolutely have to grow them. It's so important, absolutely important. But then you also have to protect the money. And yes, it does come in the form of, like I said, I do fancy myself a bit of an economist. So if I feel like a recession is going to come, I will probably de-risk a portfolio. But I'm not going to try to worry about those wiggles in the market and try to get someone out. Gregory Wilnau: Mm. Allen Harris: every time the market goes down 10 or 15 % because on average the market goes down 10 % every 14 months. It's sort of the price of admission, if you will. So on the protection side, we want to make sure someone, for example, is properly insured against catastrophes. Not necessarily insurance as an investment, but insurance as a protector. And then we have to come to an agreement with a client that you've got this money. But now you have to distribute the money. You've done a great job accumulating it, but that's what you've known to do for 40 years now. You've been a great saver, you've been a great investor, but now is the decumulation phase. And you've got to figure out the most tax-efficient way to take those dollars back out. And then eventually, you're going to pass away. You want to find the best way for your heirs to hold on to that money, to maximize the amount of money that the people who care about it's going to receive. And yes, absolutely, in there is investment returns. Gregory Wilnau: Mm-hmm. Allen Harris: need to be there. But when we have prospective clients that come to us and they're hyper focused only on the investment side and not the rest of it, it's just not as fun for us, quite frankly. Like we like to find out. Gregory Wilnau: Yeah. That's what I was going to say. I'd imagine that it's harder to form a really close intimate relationship with somebody who's just focused on investments. Wouldn't it be? You want to gain an intuitive understanding of who they are. And it's hard to do that if it's just down to business with numbers all the time. Allen Harris: It's yeah, it is true. And I think it gets into our culture here. mean, our culture is nerdy and fun and competitive. And it can be competitive in terms of like, who's going to be the first in the obstacle race, which we'll actually have done from time to time here, or it can be nerdy in terms of nerdy and competitive in terms of like, who can find the best solution for a very sophisticated and complex problem. And it's more fun for us to work with people who are thinking outside of just investments. and want to have the scope, want to enjoy and benefit from the scope of all the rest of the work that we do. Gregory Wilnau: Okay, nerdy and fun. love that. So I'm a client, I walk into your office, what's the first, what's the nerdiest thing I'm gonna see? Allen Harris: Well, it's more, it's nerdy behind the scenes. I wish I had my package right now because our COO gave us an end of the year nerd package. We had literally the nerd ropes, the candy, and there's like a power drink called nerds, which I think that she got personally monogrammed for us. And, you know, actually one of these little squeezy brain, uh, virtual money management, rest relieving things. So, so just even, even just internally. Gregory Wilnau: Stress relievers, yeah. Allen Harris: we sort of seek out that nerdiness, but certainly when we're talking to people, we try to drop that because that can be a little bit too jargony when you get into it. going back to relationship, everybody loves nerds nowadays, but it's easier to have a conversation with someone who's not gonna be dropping ⁓ terms like standard deviation and Monte Carlo or now. Gregory Wilnau: Mm. Yeah, well, I imagine that having a culture where, you know, your team is having fun together ⁓ and they're more comfortable with each other, that also translates to the relationship that you with your clients too, because everybody's on the same page. Allen Harris: Well, we think so. So we'll have every, every, I think it's second Friday, third Friday of the month, ⁓ we'll close early, have what we call BMM fun days. And it gives us an opportunity to kind of get together, try not to talk business, talk socially, but we bond with each other because you might haven't seen each other for a while. And that ends up socially becoming part of what we are professionally, which is collaboration. So we're, we're an enterprise forum. We work as a team, we work in collaboration. And so. Everyone has their certain roles and responsibilities, but we all oftentimes have these own specialties that we're really good at. And so if we're working with a client, we want to be able to very easily go to our colleague who is also our good friend and say, I need some help on this. Let's collaborate on a solution for this. Gregory Wilnau: I like that. I like how you guys pass the ball. ⁓ Everybody's on the same page. Let's talk a little bit more about that. So one of the questions I'd like to ask is the difference between a larger ⁓ firm and a more boutique one like yours. There are pros and cons to both, so we're not going to try to say which one's better. But help me understand maybe more about the benefits of working with a more boutique firm like you. ⁓ Allen Harris: Well, I can't speak for my, I'd be biased for me to say Berkshire Money Management is better because, and I do have a long list, but it probably makes more sense for me to use the words of the clients who have come to us from the bigger firms. And oftentimes, ⁓ because I don't want to make it sound like a pitch, I just want to share with you what other clients have told us. And oftentimes, it's kind of cliche, but I feel like a number is what we'll hear. Gregory Wilnau: ⁓ I like that. Allen Harris: And we've got 22 people that work here. We've got, I always lose count, but I think it's seven advisors and 850-ish clients. so we have a three-person strong customer service team and bringing more on and para planners. And so there's a lot of different people who are touching the work that needs to be done for the clients, but the clients know these people. our people know when they call up, now CallerID helps, but we also know the voice when they call. Like you don't need to listen to the CallerID. And there's something about that in terms of yes, the feels, the vibes that the clients like, but it's also something very important to clients and understandably so, when we don't need to go ahead and pull up a report from the conversation that we had two years ago and we finally had a conversation to know about Gregory Wilnau: Hmm. Allen Harris: this issue with your family or this complexity or this want that you wanted to accomplish, this need that you were planning for. And you actually know what it is. So when there's a conversation, it's we know you as opposed to, all right, number 739, let me just pull up a report and see what happened last time. People, again, people love that vibes-wise, but it does seem to really integrate much better too when we're doing our cross-sectional work and collaboration. Like, oh yeah. Gregory Wilnau: Yeah. Allen Harris: Yeah, have Sally. I know exactly what we're talking about. Let me just pick up this ball and run with it because I know what the next step in the work. Gregory Wilnau: I love that. I love the collaboration. Okay, so maybe let's talk more about, okay, let me ask this question. So I know it might be hard to brag about yourself, ⁓ but maybe put your humble hat on for a second and tell me what's something that you guys do for your clients that takes a significant amount of time that they will likely never see or know about? Allen Harris: You likely it was the last part I said. Gregory Wilnau: ⁓ Something that you do for your clients that takes a significant amount of time but that they might never see or... Allen Harris: ⁓ That's actually a great question. And it's one that we've actually considered before. And so what we've done is try to remind clients, I shouldn't even say remind them, notify clients of the work that we've done so that, quite frankly, we can get credit for it, even when there's thought process done behind an action, but we didn't take action. And so a good example would be, for example, a Roth conversion. ⁓ Gregory Wilnau: Mm. Allen Harris: someone might have a traditional IRA, we want to go ahead and reduce their lifetime burden, their lifetime tax obligation burden. So we want to convert from them having to take requirement or withdrawals from the IRA, convert it to a Roth. There's a taxable event when it happens, but later on they take the money out without taxes. And we might identify an opportunity for a client and then realize Well, we can't do it this year because if we did, your adjusted gross income will come up. It'll trigger Irma. They'll have to pay more in Medicare. This is a good idea, but not the right time to do it. We will tell clients, listen, you see us take this action, but we went and did a bunch of work behind it. And part of it is because we want credit for it. I'll be honest. We want you to know that we're working hard for you. Gregory Wilnau: Yeah, sure, sure. Allen Harris: But also we want people to sleep easy because if we get the credit for it, they also are like, ⁓ you know what? They are looking at things I didn't even consider. I can feel really good about things. the one thing that we've, maybe correlation isn't causation, but one thing I've noticed is that the more we tell clients about the things that we didn't necessarily do, but worked on and just didn't need to take action, the fewer calls we get when the markets go down, Because I know they're working for us. I know they're doing something right. Gregory Wilnau: You find that that happens maybe over time, the longer that they work with you, the fewer calls maybe you get because they've seen this kind of play out and they've seen how you take that approach. Allen Harris: Yeah, like I said, correlation, price and causation. But yes, time and familiarity absolutely builds trust. So the law and you we've got we've been in business for 25 years in a couple months. And we've got clients who've been with us just about that long. And their families are, you know, second, third generation with us too. And that familiarity absolutely, you know, builds some trust. And you know, it's, it's a real going back to our competitive nature here. Gregory Wilnau: Congrats. Allen Harris: I mean, those are real high five moments for us. Like we might get a grandchild who's a client who is absolutely like not gonna be, you know, a profitable client for us. But it's like, they liked us so much that their kids and their kids' kids are working with us. Gregory Wilnau: That is cool. I could see how that would be something that you and the team would be proud of. I love that. All right. So let's talk more about what it's like to work with you. So maybe walk me through your process. when somebody becomes, let's say somebody becomes a client today, ⁓ what happens, like literally week one, week two, kind of maybe walk me through high level, what it's like to work with you during the of what I could expect as a client for maybe say the first six months to a year. Allen Harris: And the first six months, six, years can be heavy. ⁓ I don't want say it's more work than the client was expecting to get, but it's a lot because we want to be able to help. And a big part of that is implementation. You got to do something. All right, so let me start from the beginning. We have the signing ceremony, if you will. Someone comes in, they do the paperwork. Great, you're on board now. One of the first things I want to do is get in there and look at the portfolio. Now, we've had some conversations with people at this point. We understand broadly what they're looking to do, but we haven't yet done the deep financial planning, which we'll get to. But sometimes people just have bad investments in the portfolio. And before we even do a deep dive, I just want to make sure we're ripping those things out and presenting those opportunities that are in there. And of course, you're looking at the account types and the cost basis because you don't want to trigger any... ⁓ adverse tax effects and all that. But the first thing you want to do is de-risk the portfolio if need be and do so relatively to the conversations that you've had up to that point. And at that point, they're not exhaustive, but you've spent a generous amount of time with your client and they with you so you can learn what they want to do. Then we get into the... Gregory Wilnau: Right. So you might be able to spot some red flags or say, hey, this is a big thing that didn't line up with what I know about you. Let's look at that. Stuff like that, yeah. Allen Harris: Yeah, yeah. You said that you're a conservative portfolio, but you've got all of your money in three different stocks. Did we hear you wrong? Or is this the wrong portfolio for you? You said that you were tax sensitive, but here it is October, and you've got three mutual funds, your account is going to pay up huge distributions, and these are all going to be taxable for you. Gregory Wilnau: Right, right, yeah, yeah. Allen Harris: Did I hear you wrong or should we think about getting out of these now and not getting hit with these big tax distributions? So there's some easy early maintenance that we can take advantage of there. And then we go through financial planning. financial planning, even if you go to the CFP board's website, the definitions of financial planning is nebulous at best. None of us do a really great job. Defining what it is, but it's a it's a combination of things you look at it from a 30,000 foot level. It's Education, it's proactivity. It's organization. It's objectivity. It's partnership ⁓ in accountability is a big one because you can go through the plan and you can have a conversation with a client to determine what are things you need to do What are things you want to do and what are things you wish to do? So these tears are what's got to be done and Gregory Wilnau: Mm. Allen Harris: For example, Wish might be like, we want to have that beach house in Maui. And you go through the plan, like, you know what? You're close, but maybe better off right now to visit the Florida Keys once a year with the family instead. We can absolutely get you these other things, but not this yet. Yeah, so you exactly, you help with that part of it. A lot of it is a very financial part of the conversation, but a lot of it is like, do you really want that? Gregory Wilnau: Yeah. So you help them prioritize. Allen Harris: And here, ⁓ here's what's amazing about these conversations is you begin to have these conversations, especially if it's a partnership and it's a couple. And you begin to discover that for years, one partner thought that this is what both of them wanted to do because they talked about it the most and loudest and celebrated finally getting there. And if you ask the other person, well, tell us what you wanna do. you get to like, well, that's not exactly what I wanted to do. So in the financial planning process, it's not just about numbers. Gregory Wilnau: Hmm. So they never had the real conversation and you guys draw it out of them through the process. That's awesome. Allen Harris: Yeah, you get to learn. Yeah, what's amazing about it is number one, the couple end up having these conversations that they never had together in the first place, but it doesn't cause a fight. The partner who had thought that this is the retirement they're gonna have and the agenda they're gonna have and the plans they're gonna have like, ⁓ hi, I didn't know that. Of course I wanna do things you wanna do. That sounds fun, that sounds amazing. So end up having these conversations, a couple of them are having a conversation they never had before, and they end up being more bonded over it. It's amazing, it's so fun. And then you do the things you've got to do. make sure they're covered for catastrophic reasons on the insurance side. If they're of age, you want to do an analysis of maximizing their social security payments, and it could be earlier, it could be later filing, but not just that, because... It's not just an analysis of here's what you do. And that's what happens all the time. But we know, all of us know, like if you're just told to do something, you're probably not gonna get it done. It's hard, it's gonna be in a calendar, it's gonna kick you down two do-locks. So again, the accountability portion of the planning is, okay, we're gonna do it. Here's how we're gonna set it up. We're gonna actually implement it. We're gonna decide what's best, what we're gonna together decide what's best. And then we're do it. Gregory Wilnau: How do you do accountability? Do you guys do check-ins every couple of months? how does that accountability work? Allen Harris: ⁓ Shared screen, if they're in the office with us, we'll just do it with them and go through it with them. If they're not a local client, we'll just share a screen and walk people right through it. But implementation is the big thing. We do a lot of estate planning with our clients. And if you talk to any estate planner, I mean, any, but you talk to a lot of estate planners, what they'll say is they've got at any given time, 100 open estates on their desk. Someone came in, It was important to them, it felt urgent. They got the trust document done and then they never came back to file anything or to fund it because they didn't have the, the accountant didn't do the follow up really. Yes, you can put some blame on the client because they didn't get it done, but really what you need at that point is a professional, sometimes nudging you, sometimes dragging you to get it done. Gregory Wilnau: Yeah, yeah, there can be a lot of, even if you want to go after something that's important to you, there's still, you know, there could still be some resistance to taking action on it for whatever reason. But when you have somebody who knows you, knows your situation, kind of on your team rooting for you, pushing along, it makes it a lot easier, I think. Allen Harris: Well, can be, what unfamiliar can be hard and scary. Going back to what we talking about earlier on. So if you know you have to file a Medicare, and we did all the analysis to figure out what's the best way to do it, fantastic, you've got the knowledge of knowing which way to do it, but tell someone to go to the website, go into their computer and file a Medicare. I don't know what to do, what do you wanna do? So out of necessity, they'll probably figure it out, but it's better off to like, let us just do this for you. We know how to do it. We've done it a bazillion times before. It's gonna take us a little bit more time, but you don't have to figure this out because we solved it for you. You don't have to push the buns. You might have push some of the buns, but we'll do it with you and get it done. And then after all, oh, I'm sorry, go ahead. You asked what it was like for the first six months. And that whole process takes a few months. And once we've packaged all that together or gathered all the information, that's usually when we bring it over to the estate planning side. Gregory Wilnau: If you... No, no, no, go ahead, Alan. Allen Harris: The idea being, you're gonna either have heirs or a charity organization. There's gonna be someone you probably want to go ahead and leave this money to. And you wanna do so in a way that is most tax advantageous to them. Not necessarily the most tax advantage, but you wanna keep that in mind. Why do I say not necessarily? Because one of the big things we do is, our biggest competitor is ourselves and our clients because, One thing that's really great that we can do is not just give people the permission to retire, but the permission to spend your money now. Like we just went through the financial planning so you know you can spend more than you thought you could. So yeah, you want to give some of your money to your heirs, your kids, your charity later on, but don't you want to give it to them now as well? And so, you know, we will try and convince people, this may not, I shouldn't say convince, we'll try to illustrate to people, this may not be the most tax advantage thing to give away to clients. to your children now, but it's okay to do it because you have expressed to us you want to see them enjoy it or thrive through your giving. Gregory Wilnau: I love it, I love it. So before we wrap it up here, I want to ask you ⁓ if you could give one piece of guidance, regardless of whether or not they choose to work with you, it be? Allen Harris: have patience with the market. Now, as a professional investor, and I'm 53 years old, I my first stock and it was like 16, 17, something like that. I know even I'm supposed to be like, know, ice in my veins and steely, nerve and all that, and it hold on through when the market goes down 5%, not worried it's gonna go to 10%, when it goes down 10%, not worried it's gonna be down 20%. And you can have, your amygdala starts firing, and all you have to do, Gregory Wilnau: Mm-hmm. Allen Harris: to remove all that anxiety, to push a button, that button being sell, and it all goes away. The problem is usually it's at that point of most pain that you might wanna be buying, not selling, but you just want that pain to go away. so patience probably is as close a word as I can think of right now to give, to suggest that someone should have, because all the other stuff is really super hard from a. knowledge standpoint. And I can't tell people this is the one thing you need to know from the knowledge standpoint because that's you need experience, you need time, you need a team. But from an investment standpoint, that's probably the one thing you can walk away with, which is don't push that sell button with an amygdala's flier. Gregory Wilnau: And I'm sure that that's something that you help your clients through, right? That encouragement and just helping them stay focused. ⁓ Allen Harris: Well, going back to what you said earlier on, think which was very smart of you, which is the unfamiliar breeds fear. And if you can talk to someone about why the stock market is going down and historical patterns or a narrative behind what is happening, it kind of justifies or rationalize things. It does soothe people. And maybe sometimes what you want to do is say, okay, listen, I realize you're completely scared. let's go and take, what's a small amount of action we can take now? to be comfortable for you so that you can sleep at night, but then it's also not a tactic that's gonna be working against you. You wanna be able to help people with that narrative and understand what's going on. Gregory Wilnau: I love it. All right, Alan, for somebody who's interested in learning more about you or possibly working with you, how can they get in touch? Allen Harris: Probably the best way is to go to our website BerkshireMM.com. Berkshire Money Management is the name of the company. My name is Alan Harris and you can find me on LinkedIn. I try to post up there every now and then. Gregory Wilnau: All right, Alan, thank you so much for coming on the show. Really appreciate you. Really appreciate your insights. Allen Harris: Thank you, Greg. I appreciate your time. Gregory Wilnau: All right, man.