Spencer Financial Planning Turns 6!
Photo by Tim Zänkert on Unsplash
6 years old!! Wowza, am I right? We are geeking out a little bit over here at how old we are getting! I mean, in dog years we are like a full fledged adult doggo starting to get a few grey whiskers and developing selective hearing.
Let’s talk about SFP at the 6 year mark! We’ll do a little status report, a little reflection, and a little dreamin’. Let’s get to gettin’!
By the way, if you’d like to see previous birthday installments, check out these links:
A few facts
Spencer Financial Planning was “born” on June 26, 2020, with its investment advisor registration being finalized then.
Our client relationships thus far:
During the past 12 months, we served 31 Comprehensive Financial Planning clients.
7 clients signed up for a Financial Check-Up during the past 12 months.
7 clients signed up for a Jump Start Call during the past 12 months.
In total, we’ve served 78 clients/families during the past six years.
Spencer Financial Planning is still a company of two. Our staff includes:
Founder and financial planner, yours truly Keith Spencer.
Our favorite faithful Operations Manager, Nina Klein. Nina works full-time to help with all things business operations and development. She also handles client-related prep and management and all around tries to keep me on track.
I’m happily a member of the Alliance of Comprehensive Planners (“ACP”), which is a national community of tax-focused, fee-only financial advisors committed to working in our clients' best interests. I've learned so much from the top-notch advisors in that group, and I'm currently honored to be sitting on the Board of Directors as well.
I’m still a member of three mastermind groups with other financial planners, who meet both locally and virtually. This gives us a place to run ideas by one another, encourage one another, and talk about really nerdy financial stuff.
I'm on the Planner Advisory Board for the best (in my humble opinion anyway) retirement income planning software out there, Income Lab. It's pretty cool to be able to help shape the direction of their products.
My wife Melissa is the best supporter and encourager out there, so that rocks.
A few NON-facts
Keith’s new mustache has been voted the most interesting blonde stache by nobody in particular.
It has been rumored Nina will soon be sponsored by an unnamed and unknown running brand, as she has been noticed for being the fastest runner at SFP.
SFP has been voted to have the bestest floor heater in all the land by Keith’s 6-year-old golden lab, who regularly curls up in front of the heater in Keith’s office.
What’s up these days?
What’s up, you ask?! We be chillin’ and grillin’. As in, we are happily enjoying more structural and procedural momentum than ever before and yet we are still pursuing growth and improvement.
We are blessed to be serving a current 29 Comprehensive Financial Planning client households, all of whom consist of really incredible people. We are so grateful to be doing life with these folks and getting to serve them in their pursuit of life fulfillment and financial health.
Here are a few random updates from our team:
Recent Wins
This year we have implemented a quarterly Leadership Day where our top leadership (our CEO and our Operations Manager, ahem yes this is our entire team right now but shhh) meet to review the previous quarter, discuss areas needing improvement and areas of success, dream for the next quarter and year, and set priorities for projects for the upcoming quarter. It has been a huge success so far and we are eager to keep implementing similar improvements to our business structure.
We are currently switching our CRM (Client Relationship Management software) to a different platform that offers a wider service offering that we are super excited about. It is a little daunting to undertake the switch for sure, but we are hopeful that this will only set us up for even more success in the future and to be able to serve our clients more comprehensively and efficiently.
We continue to gain new clients! We are grateful to have continued interest in our services and to be finding really cool people who we want to work with.
We have had some big life events happen for several clients and we are so excited to celebrate with them!! Several retirements, a few big moves already completed or currently in process, weddings, movies being written & directed, and big promotions or job moves.
Recent Struggles
We have been focused on areas of our business that need improvement and more of our focus. One of those areas is marketing and how to keep connecting with the right people at the right time, aka people who we can uniquely help with their finances and their life fulfillment. The struggle is that neither myself nor my right-hand lady are passionate or particularly skilled at marketing or media/design, and therefore it takes a lot more push to make things happen or pursue what needs to be changed. We will take all happy thoughts and prayers anyone would like to give.
We had a particularly busy Spring season for client meetings and various other things going on, which was awesome! But it did mean some extra hours for both of us, with some business items having to be set to the side. Which inevitably meant a lot of catch-up afterwards of those pesky little items you kinda hate doing. But thankfully, we are getting caught up and back on track and using the opportunity to create even better processes and procedures around such things.
We’ve noticed a trend that the first half of the year is a little slower in terms of prospective clients contacting us and clients signing on, which can always feel a little discouraging. However, these birthday posts are good for us to remember where we were each year. Looking back at last year’s birthday post, we are reminded of the slower first half of the year that turned into a very busy second half where we had several new clients sign on. And perhaps we’ve already seen the beginning of that this year, as two new clients have signed on over the past few weeks. So we will keep going and be grateful for every new client!
Where have we been?
The last 6 years has been an incredible journey, and each year gets better.
One of the main reasons I decided to start my own financial planning firm is because I love this stuff. Finances, the puzzle of tax savings, the power of investments, the security of insurance, and all of it! Seriously. I started by simply reading and researching for fun. Which turned into implementing things for me and my family, and then extended family and even a few friends. Before too long I realized that I really liked this whole finance thing. And what I love even more is helping people. When our family moved states to be closer to extended family, the answer became pretty obvious that it was time to do this for real.
Another reason I decided to start my own firm was the flexibility it allows. I work from home, so I can easily be a part of my family’s activities and lives with no commute (I used to have a very long and tedious commute in L.A.). I can work random hours when it’s needed and take time off when something comes up. We can go on vacations flexibly when it works with school schedules. Of course, the flip side of this is the reality that sometimes it becomes easy to work more hours than perhaps is prudent and blur the lines of home and office life. But that is a challenge I gratefully accept, as the freedom and flexibility and family focus it allows is so beyond worth it.
Hiring my first full-time employee last Spring felt like a very big step. At the time, I wondered if it was a step towards, um, bankruptcy, but here we are over a year later and we are doing just fine, so that’s a plus! But in reality, the reward of having an employee, and even more so a partner in this crazy thing called small business has been a huge blessing. For one thing, it lessens the load of managing the day-to-day operations, which allows me to try to focus as much time on clients as I can. And secondly, I have a really incredible employee who works hard and does so much to not only run our business and help our clients, but also make our business better so that we can help clients better. And finally, it’s so much fun. We really value making work as enjoyable as it can be and take opportunities to have fun and laugh as much as possible. I wouldn’t be where I am, and therefore SFP wouldn’t be where it is today, without the great employee (and past employees) that I have had the pleasure of working with.
Where are we going?
Hopefully, onward and upward! We have been diligently pursuing areas of procedural growth, process implementation, and internal software and technology updates for the last while because we want to be properly set up and enabled to grow and grow well. We’re actively working on some updates to our website, which is exciting. And we’re looking to continue to grow, as there is room for growth in terms of the number of people we want to serve.
We are grateful for where we are, where we’re going, and for all who have been part of getting us here. If that includes you, and if you are reading this it does, thank you 😊.