Heroes in Business - Carter Wilcoxson Shares His Journey

Episode Date: October 19, 2021

Carter never planned to be an entrepreneur. So being the first person in his family to be on the path of entrepreneurship wasn't easy at first. Still, he kept on pushing forward. "It's all worth it." Mission Matters Guest Appearance, Adam Torres

Hey, are you a business owner, entrepreneur, or professional? If so, we want you to apply to be a featured guest on our show. My name is Adam Torres, and I host the Mission Matters series of podcasts. I've recorded over 3,000 episodes, and we are just getting started. How do you know if you'd be a good guest to be on the show? Well, only one way to find out, and that's to apply, but I'm going to let you in on a little secret. We want guests that have a story to tell. Guests with a brand, a product, or a service that can benefit my audience of listeners. If this sounds like you, go to missionmatters.com and click on

Be Our Guest to Apply. I'd love to talk to you and get to know more about your story. Again, head on over to missionmatters.com and click on Be Our Guest to Apply. All right, now let's get into the show. Hey, I want to welcome you to another episode of Mission Matters, your source for all things business. My name is Adam Torres, and if you'd like to apply to be a guest on the show, just head on over to missionmatters.com and click on Be Our Guest to Apply. All right. So today I have Carter Wilcoxon on the line and he's a founder and CEO over at CSI Financial Group. Carter, welcome to the show. Adam, thank you so much for having me today.

All right. So we have some good things to talk about today. So we will get into CSI Financial Group. We're going to talk about how to competitor proof your practice. I mean, a lot of buzzwords we'll be throwing around today and well-deserved, and they all are a testament to the work you're doing over at CSI Financial Group. But before we get into the company and the firm, let's just start off with your background a little bit. So really, how did you get into or go down this path of entrepreneurship? Because it's not an easy one. Well, first of all, let me just say that I don't think anybody necessarily is born and they're like, oh, I'm an entrepreneur

or I'm going to grow up and be an entrepreneur. So things just sort of providentially happen to you. And that's kind of been, that'll be the theme of my story, truth be told. So, you know, my background, born and raised in Little Rock, Arkansas, which makes me a Razorback fan for those of you out there that are sports fans. And then, you know, whenever I was 10, we moved to Kansas City, go Chiefs this week,

two weekends from now, Super Bowl going back to back. Again, I ended up moving out to Phoenix, Arizona eventually. But as I was growing up, I never really thought to myself, I was going to be an entrepreneur. So those things I think happened at a certain time and in certain people's lives. Mine happened because I had been grinding it as an employee out there. You know, I used to be a corrugated box factory forklift driver, you know, but golf was always, I say always, I grew up playing sports, golf from the time that I discovered golf, if my life was a stock, it would have gradually increased from the time my life was exposed to golf. That's where everything changed.

So I ended up moving from Kansas City out to Phoenix, Arizona, where I am at now. And I've been out here for 23 years. I'm an amazing family. And I worked as a caddy at a private club up North Scottsdale. And that's where I eventually met the gentleman who brought me into this business, who was really responsible for me taking that path of entrepreneurship. And it sort of happened not overnight. Like I said, it kind of got to a point where I'm like, man, I feel like I can do this. Right. And you just, you just have this sense that, you know, there's more for you. So if you feel that way and then things happen again, providentially along the way, you get introduced to somebody or somebody exposed you to this or expose you to that, which we'll

talk about here in a little bit. It ends up becoming a situation where you're like, okay, I'm tired of working for the man. That's what it boiled down to for me. So if you have that feeling yourself and I did, I'm like, there's got to be something better, something bigger. I mean, in my life growing up, this is a part of the podcast that when I normally do this for others as guests, where I say, you'll read it in the book one day. So my life has been chock full of adversity of which I've had to overcome. And that's necessary. If you're going to be a successful

entrepreneur, you have to be able to overcome adversity. And I've been doing that for a very long time. But growing up, I never thought to myself I'd be, you know, have my own family. I'd own my own car. I would own my own house, you know, because my life growing up in my family, you didn't see that type of stuff, right? You know, you hear the old story, Adam, about you were the first generation to go to college, right? Well, I was the first generation to be an entrepreneur. So, and a lot of times that means not going to college, which I did not. I mean, you know, you can name quite a few that went to college and maybe they didn't go to college forever.

I mean, Bill Gates comes to mind, right, because he was entrepreneurial. But those things don't happen until later on. So anyway, that's a quick little back story about, you know, the entrepreneurship and how I embrace that. Not necessarily because I was born thinking that, but I but I do feel I was born to become that. Yeah. And I'll have to say one thing though. I feel like maybe just maybe Elon Musk was born an entrepreneur. I don't know. His day was like his birthday. I don't know. Cause that guy. And he, and he's one of my most favorite people that I listened to on a regular basis, follow him on Twitter and you know, you, you get the emails and you're, you're, he's one of my most favorite people that I listen to on a regular basis. Follow him on Twitter and you get the emails and he's always on news.

In fact, I was just sharing a video not too long ago, and we'll talk about this maybe later on too. But he was talking about one of the biggest issues that a lot of these boardrooms have is that most of them are run by MBAs, not people who've actually been dealing with the end user consumer. MBAs, not people who've actually been dealing with the end user consumer. And they start to live in this, you know, this box essentially, or this echo chamber almost like, well, I'm an MBA and I'm, well, yeah, but you've never really worked with the customer that we're trying to promote. So anyway, I love Elon Musk to your point. Yeah. So, you know, there's some, there's

a lot of people watching this right now, and some are a little bit further along in their entrepreneurial journey. And I don't mean by age, by the way, because we all start at different points. So some people are, you know, finishing their corporate career and they're retiring and now their retirement is in the starting of business. So, I mean, I don't mean age when I say younger in their career, I just mean in their experience as an entrepreneur. So if you were to, you know, if you could go back to that Carter, that was just getting started as an entrepreneur again, and maybe give him a word or two of advice, what kind of things would you tell him? Well, the first thing that I would tell him is it's all going to be worth it. Right. Cause you're going to question yourself along the way. You're going

to be like, why am I doing this again? Like, like it, there's so much sacrifice and there's so much, you know, you've heard again, Adam, many times, if it was easy, everybody would be doing it. Right. That's why being an entrepreneur, it's not meant to be easy. But if you have something that like you wake up every single day and you have like this passion for it and you don't have to be an entrepreneur to have a passion towards something, right? Your why of your purpose on earth. My son, for example, 14 years old at the end of this month, you know, he has a passion for golf.

So he wakes up every day like that's what I'm going to do. And I would say to you, to me, on my journey to start out with, when it's all said and done, it's going to be worth it. You're going to doubt yourself. You're going to get beat up. You're going to be, you know, raked to go over the coals. You know, you got to dust yourself off, pick yourself up by your bootstraps, and keep remembering why you started down that path in the first place. That's the number one thing that I would tell myself as I was getting ready to get started. The other thing I would say to them is that it's ever evolving, right? What

you're an entrepreneur for and whatever process, and we're very process-driven, process-oriented, whatever that is, it's meant to be refined as you're developing it along the way. Done is better than perfect. I say that on a regular basis. So stop trying to be a perfectionist. Going back to my son, that's the one thing I've tried to instill in him and said, look, golf is a process and you're not gonna be Tiger Woods overnight, right?

You have to continue developing and refining those skills. The top 10 golfers in the world aren't that far off from the top 1 top 10 golfers in the world aren't that far off from the top thousand golfers in the world. It's like basis points sometimes, right? Especially when you get up to like in the top 150. So you got your top 10 and you got your top 150. That is like basis points differential for sure. So it's just one of those things you have to understand. It's not going to be perfected overnight. It's ever evolving. So just enjoy the journey is what I would tell myself. So those two things for sure. let me do some interviews. And they're not all going to be perfect, just like your round isn't going to be perfect. But we just go out there every day. In your case, you're swinging a golf

club. In my case, I'm looking at a camera and talking. But every day, let me go do some interviews and enjoy the process along the way. So I love that word of advice. And Carter, I want to switch it up a bit. So I want to get into CSI Financial Group and go a little bit further into what you're doing and how you're helping people. So maybe first off, just give us a little background of the firm. So CSI Financial Group, I founded July of 2014. And it was really something I was forced into doing. I say forced. I was kind of sort of like, you know, just push this

direction. And that's where my entrepreneurial mind started, you know, formulating. I'm like, man, I think I can do this. Right. I mean, you know, when you're working in, in a company like the one that I got my foundational beginnings and understandings in, you know, you don't, you don't think to yourself, well, I can do that. I can get an admin like that, or I can get, you know, salespeople like that, or I can get contracting like that, or, you know, you don't think to yourself, well, I can do that. I can get an admin like that, or I can get, you know, salespeople like that, or I can get contracting like that. Or, you know, you're not thinking about all those different things. So the simple fact that I spent 10 years in this space before I decided to go this route

in 2014, but what I ended up doing to start out with is I sought out people in the industry that I knew could give me direction. is I sought out people in the industry that I knew could give me direction. So I have been embracing collaboration for 15 years, right? Great word. You do not have to own it all, right? You can find a strategic alliance with people that have a shared vision

in what you're trying to accomplish. And if you can create mutually beneficial arrangements with all those where everybody wins, everything's a win-win, you can create mutually beneficial arrangements with all those where everybody wins, everything's a win-win, you can change the world as far as I'm concerned. So, and that's what I really set out to do initially, not change the world necessarily, but I did set out to change the industry to what I call, you know, recreate this industry that's been around for about 25 years, well before I got into it. So CSI Financial Group formed with this idea and this belief that we can recreate an industry that's needed

some recreation forever. Don't be like everybody else. So I started thinking to myself, whenever I first started, and I didn't even have a business model. It was like, I'm going to go back to my advisors I'd worked with in the past and kind of sort of leverage those relationships. Because what ended up happening is that I went from the independent wholesale, you know, distribution space where I'm at into personal production, being an advisor myself. personal production, being an advisor myself. And I formed a phenomenal relationship with an estate planning attorney in Covington, Louisiana, who had a phenomenal practice out there. And what I would do is I would fly out to her office once a month for an entire week. And I would incorporate the solutions that I had with her already existing clientele. Now, to get your start like that was almost a godsend. It was unbelievable. But that happened because I'd formed a relationship. Everybody

listening out there, you're in the relationship business. And if you can always understand that, you'll be successful. Maybe that's another tip. But what ended up happening is that helped me to develop what now is and is in existence and what we call the advisor partner platform that I'm the architect of here at CSI Financial Group, because it gave me the understanding from a personal production advisor, retail advisor out there in the field that's working with Mr. and Mrs. Jones, it helped me to understand and empathize what it is that they deal with on a regular basis. Now, it also helped me understand because of my relationship with that estate planning attorney in Covington, Louisiana, just outside of New Orleans, the connectivity between estate planning and financial planning, the necessity, the requirement. If you're going to really do true planning, that has to be an integral part and it has to be foundational. The estate planning has to be foundational in order to really, we'll talk about this later, elevate that client experience for that client. So that was the sort of the infancy and the mindset.

But what additionally helped me to form everything is I come at it from two very important phrases that I use on a regular basis. Number one, product is not the unmet need in this industry, right? Whether it's life insurance, annuities, AUM, REITs, that's nothing new under the sun. Everybody has that, right? And then number two, and more importantly, is it all begins and ends with client acquisition. So all those best products and solutions you have matter not if you don't have the right process in place to then incorporate those solutions. So that's kind of sort of the backstory and that's kind of how we're at now some almost seven years later coming up in July. Wow. What an amazing story. And I do want to go into that onboarding and what that means. But

before we get into that, like and what that means. But before we get into that, what's your right type? Because there's a lot of financial advisors listening. There's people in the wholesale space. I mean, there's a lot of different people watching this. What's a good fit? What's a good ideal client type to work with CSI Financial Group? Thank you for asking me that, Adam, because it's actually part of what we call our fit agenda, right? So we want to be a good fit for one another. I said it earlier, it has to be mutual. Advisors inherently know this. People do business with you who they know and they like and they trust, right? Okay. Well,

that's no different on my side of the equation, but because in my space, it's really been commoditized. No one's really brought to market until we did, until we really set out to change the rules of the game, which we have with our process. We wanted to eliminate the product necessity. We wanted to create a process that someone could tap into. So the ideal client has to be someone that is no longer wanting to be just transactional. Sidebar. If anybody understands a transaction has to occur to monetize a relationship, it's this guy. I understand that. But what we are seeking, a fit, perfect ideal client for us, an independent financial advisor is someone who wants to transform their practice. And we help them to transform their practice to then create, and we'll talk maybe a little bit about this later on, that professional contrast and that differentiator and that super competitive space that they're all in. And my understanding of it is what is sort of differentiates me because I was out in the field. So I know how competitive that is.

Let's go into that. So let's just, so professional contrast, because I think it's a unique thing that your firm's doing and that it's helping advisors achieve. So define that for us. What professional contrast means over at CSI? And thank you for that question. That's awesome. So define that for us. What professional contrast means over at CSI? And thank you for that question. That's awesome. So whenever I started out CSI Financial Group, a little bit of backstory again, I knew that beyond a shadow of a doubt, before I even created the advisor partner platform as that architect, I knew that I couldn't just be like everybody else. I had to differentiate myself. It couldn't just be the products and the services and my cheery disposition that people are going to do business with me, right? I can start doing it that way,

but how am I going to retain that, right? So I'm like, how am I going to, I asked myself, Carter, how are you going to differentiate yourself? How are you going to be, how do you contrast yourself in this white noise that's going out there that everybody's trying to compete against all of these ideal advisors? But because I've been in the space, I took it one step further. And I asked myself, how am I going to differentiate the advisor when they do business with us? How am I going to differentiate the advisor when they do business with us? So that professional contrast is because of the system that they're able to tap into. That's all completely turnkey when they learn and understand and we enlighten our advisor partners, as we call them. They then understand how we are going to separate them from everybody else in that super competitive space. You have

Merrill Lynch, UBS, Ameriprise, New York Life, Pacific Life. I could go on and on and on on the different advisors that are out there who are trying to secure new clients that are, you know, 55 and up primarily because they've gone through the accumulation phase. They're the ones with all the money. Right. It's the old saying, Billy, the kid, why do you rob banks? Because that's where the money's at. Right. That's where you go. So these baby boomers that are retiring, 10,000 to 11,000 baby boomers that are retiring for the next 15, 16, 17 years, we hear this all the time, how do you get your piece of that? And that's what everybody's trying to figure out. So whenever I set out on this journey, not only was it to differentiate me from the rest of those other providers, I also took it that one step further because I was in the field, because I was enlightened in understanding their traditional challenges that are out there when it comes to client acquisition. So that's what we solved. And that's what that differentiator

and that professional contrast ultimately is all about. Let's talk about this idea of competitor proofing your business, because I think it's a unique concept.'s talk about this idea of competitor-proofing your business, because I think it's a unique concept. And when I heard you say it, as we were doing the warm-up, I'm like, competitor-proof? Who wouldn't want to do that, especially when you're in a competitive space where that contrast is necessary? So tell me a little bit more about how CSI is helping people competitor-proof their business. Well, first of all, let's just talk about the process to help the competitor proof those clients. And I talked about the fit agenda. I forewarn my advisor partners, uh, prospectively before they become an advisor partner and just sidebar again, we call it the advisor partner platform because we want it to feel like a

partnership. I'm helping you grow your practice. You're helping me grow my practice. And that's why it's a partnership. So let's talk about the, because of the client experience that we take the clients through that help them. But I forewarn these advisors, careful what you wish for, because if done properly, these clients are going to be yours in perpetuity. So that in and of itself, competitor proofs those clients, right? And that journey that they go through, that experience that those clients go through with our team of specialists on the estate planning side of the equation, which ultimately leads to on the backend for those advisors, the ability to now present their best solutions, right? Whether that's I manage money the best, or they're open to that opportunity. I'm talking about the end

user consumer are now more open to that opportunity to hear what they're going to be able to share with them, right? Because they've gone through this, this initial foundational approach. See, at the end of the day, Adam, what we really do and what our advisor partners are doing with our team of specialists is that we are delivering true peace of mind for the masses of people who have assets that when we help to demystify what estate planning truly is, that's what's going to help to competitor-proof those ideal clients because it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. The clients, when they go through the experience, they're just like, well, my guy never showed this to me. In fact, I just interviewed

on one of my own podcasts just recently, I interviewed one of my advisor partners that shared a story with me that he had, and just real quick, he had a client that he'd been managing, you know, their money. And she was 70, early seventies, still working as a flight attendant for Southwest annuities. Great story, by the way, Southwest annuities. I love their backstory. Her, she had a special needs son that ended up getting into a horrific car accident and succumbed about two months after that and ended up passing away. About six months later, as he was trying to think about how he could reach back out to her because he managed about a million dollars of her assets and had done some annuities with her already on top of that,

he was trying to, he was like, you know, that's so raw. So how do I reach back out to her? He didn't have to worry about that too long. Six months after this happened, she calls him up and she says, John, I want to let you know something. I'm moving all my money. And here's the key reason why. You never helped me set up my estate plan.

And in his mind, he was thinking, well, you don't have a tax problem. The conventional wisdom of most advisors that are out there think to themselves that estate planning is just for millionaires and billionaires, which it's not. It's for everybody who has assets and they want to make sure that how that's transferred to the next generation is done exactly the way they want to. So we call it proactive planning or estate planning. So that right there, that is the reason why every advisor needs to have this be a part of that, because you can lose clients by not having this be part of your process in your platform. So that competitor proof right there, the clients come to

their own conclusion. They're like, why would I go anywhere else? This guy or gal has everything I need all underneath one roof. And let me tell you something that we have learned along the way. In the hundreds of onboarding clients throughout the country, we have learned that they want to consolidate. They don't want to be spread out between three different, you know, insurance agent, financial advisor, a state planning attorney. They want it to be all underneath one roof to simplify their lives. So that is a couple of things. Now, specifically, I want to talk about competitor proofing. If you do it properly, you become what's called the TIA, the trust investment advisor inside of the documentation where we have codified laws that secure you as retaining those assets when your very best clients pass away. So you don't have to try to figure out how to, you know, formulate a better relationship with the clientele, here's a staggering step. 66% to 98% of the time, and we have all these numbers to bear it out, 66% to 98% of the time, when these advisors that they're working with their very best clients out there, when they pass away,

66% to 98% of the time, the assets that they're managing evaporate because they get transferred out to the next generation completely outright. So we educate the clients on the front end why that doesn't make sense and why we can proactively set all that up. But then what that does is it retains those assets for the advisors that are out there so that that doesn't happen. So now we've competitor proofed and secured the next generation and caused generational control for those advisors who fully embrace our platform, which is why I say, careful what you wish for, because you're going to want to make sure these are the clients that you're going to want to work with, because inherently, you're working with the beneficiaries in perpetuity as well. So anyway, that's a couple of more specific detail on how to

competitive proof your practice. And so you mentioned the estate plan. I want to go further into that. And I also want to talk a little bit more about the onboarding process. So so what does that look like? Like your onboarding process? Maybe we'll start there and then let's get into a little bit more of the nuts and bolts of the East State plan. Yeah. So obviously, we have a process that we have. And again, we're process driven, process oriented. But more importantly, probably the most important thing, we're process driven, process oriented, but more importantly, probably the most important thing, we're also results driven, right? So we've already seen the results. We've seen, we've got proof of concept on all the things we've been doing for over three years now. So as far as the onboarding for the end user consumer, what we do is we have what's called the OEPT, the Outsourced Estate Planning Team.

And what I did is I saw through the eyes of the advisor to their end user consumer. And I understood what the end user consumer was missing and what they were lacking, what they really wanted, what I thought that they wanted. Right. Steve Jobs was like, no, people are going to want the iPhone, right? He didn't know that, but he looked through and they were like, no, they're going to want this. So we have proof of concept that as looking through the eyes of, from the advisor's perspective into what it is that the end user consumer is going to want, that's what we developed. So this outsource estate planning team becomes that the collaborative, going back to that again, the collaborative work and efforts with the advisor of record. And we educate them on all these on all these steps just so you know, they don't have to try to figure it out themselves.

And I use this terminology if left when left to their own devices, they're doomed to fail, right? And that's typical for most advisors. So we decided to set out on this journey to do three things better than anybody else. And that's where the OEPT ultimately was formed. So I started thinking, why don't we just do all the heavy lifting for them? Work collaboratively with the advisor. And then so the client client goes onto a calendar for one of our advisor partner mentors who has formed a relationship with the advisor working collaboratively with them. So they understand their practice and their makeup and they, and they know how to talk

about them along the way. So everything's calendar first and foremost, everything is personalized. Everything is just, just the way we're doing this right now. It's actually live and in real time. So you have the mentor that walks the client through what we call the client intake interview. They take them through the steps. Client goes, you know what? I've been procrastinating. Sidebar again.

That's typically where they end up. They're one of two categories. They've either done something in the past and they're like, man, that was painful. I don't want to talk or think about it again, but I know I need to make some updates and some changes. And maybe it was, um, maybe it was, uh, the, the, the fact that it was just so painful. I don't want to go through it again, but I really know I have to do this for my family. That's the one category. The other category primarily is that procrastination. They're like, I know I need to get this done. I know that it's something I've been pushing off and pushing off because I mean, if you think that the only thing you can do is go see an attorney to get something done, who wants to go do that? I mean, no, nobody wants to go do that. Right. So we're just like,

we're just going to be that team. So client goes, yes, I know I've been procrastinating. Let's do it. So it's literally, we go into the system, we go to a landing page, we'll call the homepage, the order page. You go in, you click a few buttons. And again, we actually say we had this nice, easy tie together to make it to give you an idea of what it's like, what it really is. It's like Amazon, Uber, and LegalZoom all wrapped into one. That's really what it's all about, right? So like Uber, right? You hit some buttons and you take the destination and they take you through and then you end up in your destination, right? Amazon, you click some buttons, stuff just shows up at your door, right? And then LegalZoom, you got to have the legal documents and everything

done and legal protocols. So that's what all this is all about. So the client is then taken through a few data entry points. The very first thing that we educate the clients on is that, and the advisor, by the way, is this proprietary process that we call our 90 and 90 formula. And, and Adam, the reason why we call it the 90 and 90 formula, because Mr. and Mrs. Jones advisor, when you start talking to your clients, we can get 90% of your estate plan done in 90 minutes or less. So we take them through this entire process, all from the safety and comfort of their own home, which is important at this time. So what ends up happening is that that's again, more of that competitor proof and more of that professional contrast

and more of that client experience and elevating that for these advisors, right? So the advisor partner mentor simply just takes them through. They take some data entry, take the credit card statement. The server sends out emails to all the team members that know that we're getting ready to onboard a client. We have the next step where the advisor partner mentor that we have that's been working with that mentee, as we call them, they're going to then calendar with the specific trust, I'm sorry, with the funding specialist that's going to take them through the next step. Then they have their steps that they take them through that takes you to the attorney that takes them through the review, applicability, suitability interview. Again, all done just like this, all screen share,

all face-to-face, all of that's done. And then what ends up happening is that the attorney of record then recalendars with the advisor mentor who started it for the mentee onto their calendar. And we do this thing called proof of funding, which is where we go through and we go, see, we got everything in here. We can get this done literally depending on how fast the, or how or how available the, that everybody is. And a lot of times it's the clients and how, what their availability is. Of course, typically they're retired. So their, their availability is pretty wide open a lot of times. So then we do the proof of funding. And then what we're doing is we're elevating and we're putting on a pedestal

the mentee. Now make sure I see some, I see some areas here right now, Mr. and Mrs. Jones, that whenever you go back to said advisor, make sure you talk to him about, you know, some of these things that he can help with, whether it's risk mitigation or tax mitigation or some of the things like that to have an opportunity, because that's part of the package that you bought. It's all, it's all part of the deal, right?'re what we're doing is we're we're handing back over to the advisor and teeing up for lack of better terminology that opportunity to really monetize that relationship without him or her really doing anything now here's what a lot of my advisor partners uh mentees do and i make this suggestion, is that they've got the relationship with the

client already. They've articulated all the things that we train them to articulate. But to check in with them, hey, Mr. and Mrs. Jones, this is, you know, Joe advisor, you know, I just want to follow up with you, make sure, you know, that my team's doing a good job, and we want them to promote his team, right? We want him or her to look bigger than they are because usually they're, you know, they are working. They're not literally working on the trunk of their car, but you know what I'm saying? A lot of times they have a, you know, maybe a small executive office and, you know, they're not Merrill Lynch necessarily. Now, if you are, it makes it even easier, right? And we, so we do all

this stuff with them, but they're just calling, checking in, just making sure, and they're just rapport building. That's all that they're doing. So now they have this connectivity and going back to the professional contrast, these clients come to their own conclusion that they're going to do this.

You know, Socrates did much of the same thing, you know, not to get too philosophical here, but Socrates, you know, most people think, you know, not to get too philosophical here, but Socrates, you know, most people think, you know, the man on the map, he gave people all this advice. That's not really what he did. What he did was he told people all the things that they needed to know to ultimately help them draw their own conclusions. And that's much like what we do here as well. So anyway, that's the process. And that 90-90 formula is how all that gets done. And now that peace of mind is what's been delivered. It opens yourself up to introductions, as I call them.

So without having to feel, this is my humble opinion. I think a lot of advisors feel like asking for a referral almost feels like you're begging. Like, how do you ask for a referral? You know, they may not feel like that, but I think inherently, deep down inside, they almost feel like, well, hey, now that I've helped you, I don't really want to help you anymore. Can I help anybody else that you know? What's wrong with me, right? So again, you want to frame it, and we help with business development on being able to go back to those clients. But we have, I have voicemail after voicemail after voicemail that my fully enlightened, that have fully embraced our proprietary process, advisor partners.

They share recordings with me all the time of strangers that have called them, that their clients that they onboarded are calling and saying, Hey, this is Mr. Such and such you helped. Um, you know, my buddy Tom with his estate planning. Can you help me with that too? Like I will tell you, in fact, I'll, I'll, I would ask the audience right now, think to yourself, when was the last time that somebody called you up and said, hey, can you sell me something that you sold to my other guy, my buddy? So if you could replicate your 10 best households over and over again, wouldn't you want to do that? It's rhetorical. I mean, and that's what we really help to do.

And that's why I say another phrase. It's not what it is. It's what it does. And that's really we really help to do. And that's why I say another phrase, it's not what it is, it's what it does. And that's really ultimately what all this does. Wow, that's awesome. So you got a lot going on. Obviously your process is intact. It's working.

A lot of advisors are using it to grow their practices. I mean, what's next for CSI Financial Group? Oh man, thank you so much. This is a little pre-commercial, right? So I've got this logo right over here, over my right shoulder right now. So we are in the works. We're in formation mode as we speak, form a revolutionary, one-of-a-kind, accessible, what we call advisor friendly trust company. And it's going to be domiciled in Nevada. We've already got our boards already been selected. It's a who's who, who's going to be on the board, by the way.

The software, the e-state plan is going to be powering the trust company. And I won't say the name of it right now because it is in formation, but it is going to be a revolutionary trust company that's going to be all about connectivity and access. Access for advisors, and I'm going to use that terminology very loosely right now, right? So if you're just an insurance agent only, if you are an RIA or registered rep, right? We have relationships right now with a couple different broker dealers that are buying into this. We are securing, as we speak in real time, I've got the final onboarding meeting with a company that's got 5,000 insurance agents only that are going to be utilizing our system. So we've already built it for scale, just so you know. But the trust company is going to change not only access and connectivity

for the advisor network, it's also going to be access and connectivity like never before for the masses of people who have assets that when we educate them on why it's actually detrimental in most cases to have your assets be outright distributed to the next generation because of the horror stories that we've heard. You know, it's much like, you know, you can look this up and maybe know this already, Adam, but you know, the, the wealth that gets inherited is not really understood on the next generation because they didn't necessarily build it themselves. Right. So they squander it,. There's exceptions to every rule, but a lot of times they do, much like lottery winners. When a lottery winner wins that

money, I mean, I think there's a Powerball right now that's around a billion dollars. I'm not even sure if somebody won it over the weekend or not. If you won a billion dollars and now that's money won, so to speak, do you really appreciate that money? No, you don't. And all too often, we see that the next generation doesn't really appreciate it either. So we help the grantor, co-grantors, who are the advisors that are listening right now, their very best clients that are sitting there right now that need this tool to secure those assets. So when the inevitable happens, the trust company will ensure that that happens because they will be fiduciarily responsible by law to require, to follow by the letter of the law and what we call the E-State plan portfolio that makes up a revocable living

trust. Whatever that says, the trust company has to go buy that. Now, what most people don't know is that they think that, well, my best, most trustworthy son or daughter is just going to be the executive of my estate, but there's no recourse for them. They're not really actually fiduciary. So they don't have to follow exactly what it says that they, if they come together and go, Hey, mom and dad, you know, I know that they wanted to do this and everything, but it's going to take us 20 years to get that inheritance. We're going to have to take a title of all the assets. Anyway, let's just split it 50, 50 and, you know, yeah, we'll send a hundred thousand dollars instead of the million dollars, you know, to PETA or to wounded warriors or to St. you know, to PETA or to Wounded Warriors or to St. Jude's or to, you know, I was trying to think of ACLU, right? I mean, I'm using both sides of the equation there, right? They may not think the

same way they do. And they're like, well, we'll send a hundred thousand instead of a million, even though that's what they really want to do. Well, the only way to do that is you have to have the fiduciarily responsible, given the authority, professional corporate trustee, which is what a trust company does. So we're going to make accessible and connected all across the country, this access that no one's really ever had. And if you look up Northern Trust right now, you can check out, they have a December 2017 ending. Their assets under management that they had because this process was set up, I'm not making this number up, look it up yourself, $1.2 trillion of assets under management. And the reason why that is, is because they typically just work with, you know, $10 million and up clients. If you have $100,000 or $500,000 or $50,000, you'll have access to a trust company without having to feel like you have to be a millionaire or billionaire. And on the front end, we educate them on why that's important. So that's what's next. And that's what's very big

for CSI Financial Group. Man, that is a big deal, especially with this big transfer of wealth going on and just what's going to happen in the next 10, 20, 30 years. Like trustee services, huge business and huge opportunity that's not really, I mean, it's not being met by enough, let's just say, companies out there. So I'm glad to see that you're going through. It's not an easy thing to do what you're pulling off, by the way. So I know how difficult it is and I know the complexity. And if you weren't a process-oriented company already working very heavily in the estate planning arena with things like e-state plan, then you wouldn't be able to pull this off. So that's awesome. And it's also really, I mean, just a big benefit for all

your advisors. I'm sure they're pretty excited to have this thing roll out, huh? It's unbelievable. The amount of people who have literally, because we're in capital raise mode right now, right? So it's not easy. In fact, the FID, Financial Institutions Division of Nevada, has a million dollar requirement that has to be an escrow before you can even apply. So that in and of itself makes barrier to entry that much more difficult. So we've been in capital raise mode. So those advisor partners who've been part of this early on, our early adopters, almost

every one of them have bought in for being able to get a unit to help us capitalize the company so that we can be able to do exactly what we're talking about. So excited, honestly, might be the understatement of, I'm going to say the decade for right now, maybe the century at some point in the future. So yeah, they're very excited about it. And those, again, those advisor partner prospectively, And those, again, those advisor partner prospectively, the ones who become enlightened on all of this stuff, it will change their practice. If done properly, it's impossible to not be successful. But we do a lot of the heavy lifting without them having to change their entire practice. It's just an add-on to what it is that they're doing.

And I've been saying this for a long time. I don't, my humble opinion again, I don't really believe that you can truly call yourself a trusted advisor if you don't have this capability in your platform to be able to help these clients out. And I just shared that story with one of my advisors who lost a client simply because in his mind, well, you only have a million and a half dollars. He goes, bye, I'm leaving you because you didn't help me with this estate plan. So anyway, and we can do it all. Everything from comprehensive estate planning to the very simplest estate planning as well. So it's very exciting for everybody that's part of this. And they've literally bought into the vision I've shared with them.

Amazing. So Carter, if somebody is watching this and they want to learn more and they want to inquire about working with CSI Financial Group, I mean, what's the best way for them to connect in a follow-up with you and your team? Yeah. So the ideal way is you can go to our website. I have my calendar on there right now. You can schedule as small as a 15-minute meeting up to an hour meeting with me to learn more about it. So you can go to www.csifg.com, like Crime Scene Investigation Financial Group.com. You can go there. You can find my calendar. You can click on the Advisor Solutions tab on there. There are some videos on there that you can learn more about the estate plan. You can go to a few of our different websites that we help

advisors create ourselves. Our team does this. So we're a marketing organization. The IMO stands for independent marketing organization. And just a quick little backstory again, the thing that frustrated me when I first got into this space was I thought that when I started working for a company like what I formed, I thought, oh, well, we help advisors with marketing. That's actually not what it is. All we're really doing is marketing the insurance company's products to the advisor. Well, there's nothing different, nothing new under the sun there because everybody has the same products. We wanted to truly be a marketing organization that could help with marketing. So we changed the acronym or there was actually a different terminology, but we're an IMO slash PDO. And the PDO stands for Practice Development Organization.

So we create all the things that are necessary that advisors need, because I was one in the field, that they're usually, a lot of them are missing, website and their branding and all the stuff that they really need. Because they now, more than ever, need to be Google proof. If you Google, when I did my research, when you Google certain advisors, one of two things will come up. Either one, they have a website and it's like, wow, that's horrible. Or number two, and sometimes which is better, they don't have a website at all because the website they do have makes it look like, why would I do business with you? So you have to look bigger than you are overnight. So you can't just hang your hat on products, pricing, and performance.

You have to hang your hat on process. And if you tell your clients that you have a process, by golly, you better have one. We've just built it for them. So it's completely turnkey. So just go to my website, find out more about me, schedule 15 minutes to an hour, and we'll walk you through and we'll see if we'll have that fit agenda and see if we're a good fit for one of them. Fantastic.

Well, Carter, this has been an absolute pleasure having you on the show today and really learning more about what you're doing over at CSI Financial Group and how you're helping your clients. And to the audience, as always, thank you for tuning in. If this is your first time tuning in, definitely hit that subscribe button. We love to have you be a return visitor. We have a lot more great episodes and guests coming up for you just like Carter. And Carter, thanks again for coming on the show. It's been awesome. Adam, seriously, the pleasure has been all mine. Thank you so

much for allowing me to be on today.