Most people are more concerned about what is going to happen in the next few years, not the next 50 years. They want to strike a balance between planning for the future while enjoying their life in the present.
On this Elementality, Abby welcomes Eric Rodriguez of Wealth Builders LLC. Eric explains how to empower clients to make more informed decisions by using Elements to tell a visual story of how money and major life decisions are interconnected. Prospective clients often misunderstand the financial planning process. Elements provides a quick snapshot of financial health, allowing a client to visualize their current financial standing. They see more clearly how today’s decisions affect liquidity, debt, and their long-term savings goals.
Podcast Transcript
Eric Rodriguez:
I really just ask questions and get people to open up. And then they just overshare and overshare and overshare. It’s almost like therapy. It’s like financial therapy.
Abby Morton:
I love that.
Eric Rodriguez:
And it’s fine fun for me. It’s fun for me. ‘Cause all I’m doing is just repeating what people are telling me.
Abby Morton:
Yeah. Yeah. You’re like, I look like the amazing person. I’m just asking the question. And then…
Eric Rodriguez:
Like, so you wanna get out of debt, you want to buy the new car, you wanna go on vacation, you wanna do this, you wanna do that? Okay, well, let’s do it. And then you’re they’re like, “Wait, what?” Yeah. What a concept. Right? Let’s actually… Let’s action these things and let’s make a plan so that you can actually live your ideal life.
Jordan Haines:
Welcome to Elementality. Each episode we will explore the challenges and the opportunities faced by financial advisors and how advisors can use Elements to grow their business and serve their clients better. We hope you enjoy this episode.
Abby Morton:
Welcome to Elementality everyone. I’m your host today, Abby Morton here with Eric Rodriguez. Welcome to the show, Eric.
Eric Rodriguez:
Hey, thanks for having me.
Abby Morton:
Eric. We met each other at our most recent customer workshop, so shout out to the workshop. I met some amazing advisors from our workshops that we do here in Salt Lake City. And when I met Eric, I was really blown away. I love his story and I was so excited to get him on the podcast. The other reason I was excited to get him on the podcast today is Eric is one of our newest ambassadors for Elements, so he’s gonna help us basically take Elements to the next level and really show Elements off in some new ways. And so I’m really excited to have Elements on board on our podcast today, but even as an ambassador. So again, welcome to the show, Eric.
Eric Rodriguez:
Yeah, thank you. I’m so excited to be here. I’m a fan of the podcast. So, looking forward to having this conversation today and obviously really excited about being a new ambassador for Elements. So, fun stuff.
Abby Morton:
Yes. Eric is amazing on social media. So if you haven’t checked him out, go check him out. It’s pretty great. He can be an inspiration to all. Hopefully we can maybe even get into that a little bit today too. So, Eric, before we start though, let’s help everyone understand who you are, where are you from, who do you serve? Tell us a little bit about your story.
Eric Rodriguez:
Sure. So I am Eric Rodriguez. I’m a certified financial planner. I’m the founder of WealthBuilders LLC. It’s a fee-only virtual RIA based out of San Diego, California. I’m originally from San Jose, so I built my practice in Silicon Valley and like many others during COVID had a to come to Jesus moment and we moved…
Eric Rodriguez:
So we moved.
Abby Morton:
Oh, interesting.
Eric Rodriguez:
We moved to the beach, we accelerated our financial life plan and started living our dream. So we’re here happy in San Diego. And…
Abby Morton:
I love… I love hearing that, like, I love when advisors are living what they’re preaching and living your dream, so that’s awesome to hear that.
Eric Rodriguez:
Absolutely. And I’m sure we’ll talk about that. But yeah, I’m big… Big into life planning, so we were basically just did a life plan on ourselves and just made this spontaneous decision to pack up and move. So…
Eric Rodriguez:
But yeah, I’ve had my firm, I launched my firm in 2017 and I work with Gen X, Gen Y accumulators, specifically somebody that has stock options or equity compensation. So just naturally growing up in the Bay Area, Silicon Valley, a lot of my friends connections, old colleagues, everybody works with either… They work for a startup or they work for a fin company and they just have all different types of equity, compensation, stock options. So that just organically became my niche. And so I also work with a lot of entrepreneurs and founders at the same time. So just a little bit about the firm.
Abby Morton:
I love that. I love that. And I guess kind of the pressing question is, how long have you been using Elements?
Eric Rodriguez:
So I’ve been using Elements now for a little over 10 months.
Abby Morton:
Okay, awesome. Okay, so when you originally were coming to demo Elements or look into Elements, tell me a little bit about what you were looking for. What was like the problem or the challenge that you were trying to solve?
Eric Rodriguez:
So what’s interesting is, I remember, I can’t remember who it was, but I spoke to somebody that was on the Elements sales team a couple years ago. And I’m notorious, like many other of my colleagues, some of my other financial planner friends are notorious about taking a look at the shiny new toy and like buying the shiny new toy and…
Eric Rodriguez:
That just happens a lot, obviously just with all these awesome FinTech solutions coming out.
Abby Morton:
Yeah.
Eric Rodriguez:
So when I first learned about Elements, it was even more early stage than what it is now, but I was just at a point where, well, I just started implementing this other software and I just switched custodians. And so it was just a lot. So I didn’t wanna put my clients through anything in addition to what they were doing already. So I initially passed on it. And then actually last year at Future Proof I remember speaking to a couple other Elements users and I was just blown away by what I was just looking at in a casual conversation.
Eric Rodriguez:
And so anyways it intrigued me because I was dealing with an issue of working with younger clients that didn’t really need a lot of the bells and whistles that traditional financial planning software had. And I am an advocate of many other softwares that are specific to certain niches. So for example, I use software for stock options. I use software for tax planning, etcetera, and several others. Cashflow. So I was finding myself using traditional financial planning software and then using five other…
Eric Rodriguez:
Five other tools. And then I was basically consolidating everything to a one page financial planning so I’m a big fan of that process. And we can go more into process if you want, but I was just looking for something that was duplicatable, something that I could show my value… Where I could show my value quickly. And honestly something that looks sexy because I was doing all of my one page plans in Canva and I am not a graphic artist. I think I have good taste when it comes to things, but I was creating my own in Canva. It was not duplicatable. Anyways, long story short, I started getting a huge influx of clients and I just didn’t have the bandwidth to make everything go quickly. So I was looking for something that I could use to be more efficient ’cause I’m a solo advisor. So as a solo advisor a great tech stack is imperative and I need to offload as much of workload as I possibly can in order for me to continue to grow and obviously retain clients and give my clients a good experience.
Abby Morton:
Okay. Awesome. And so I think… Well it sounds to me like you then feel like Elements was able to solve that problem. Like now fast forward 10 months, tell me how do you feel like… Did Elements solve that problem or has it solved maybe some other problems for you that you didn’t anticipate?
Eric Rodriguez:
Yeah, so I think number one, using the scorecard feature is fantastic because, as I mentioned, I’ve always used like a one page plan just to kind of briefly go over stuff. But I also use an acronym. It was actually the title of the book I wrote, the acronym is RETIRE. And I didn’t come up with this. I learned this in CFP school and basically the RETIRE acronym stands for, R is for Risk management, E is for Expense, T is for Tax planning, I for Investments, R for Retirement, E for Estate. So I was taught you wanna have those basics covered before you start getting into other things and investment real estate or what have you. And so I notoriously… Every time I would bring on a client, I would check the boxes, like, okay, let’s use the RETIRE acronym, let’s make sure we get this. Elements basically has that, they’re just called different Elements.
Abby Morton:
Yeah. Yeah.
Eric Rodriguez:
They’re just unique, differently. But it gives me that RETIRE acronym and then some. So that’s really helped me simplify just this initial touch with clients on the front end when I first start working with them.
Abby Morton:
Yeah. Talk me through that process. Let’s say you find a prospect that you want to work with. Can you kind of walk me through your process and exactly what you do with that new prospect you find?
Eric Rodriguez:
Sure. Happy to. So I’m really big into financial life planning and I’m actually a Money Quotient practitioner. So I’ve been using Money Quotient now for a little over two years. It’s absolutely fantastic. I know there’s other great life planning companies too, but I’ve just had an amazing experience with Money Quotient. Mostly because obviously their leadership’s fantastic, but number two, the tools that they provide us, financial planners are unparalleled in my opinion. So I usually start the process going… I start with life planning. So there’s certain surveys and deliverables that clients have to fill out before they even become a client. It’s a prospect. So they’ll fill out a couple of surveys. We’ll have… My process is two steps. So I have an initial fit call just kind of pre-screen or are we good fit? What are you looking for? Who do I work best with, yada, yada, yada.
Abby Morton:
How long is that? How long is that call?
Eric Rodriguez:
15, 20 minutes.
Abby Morton:
Okay.
Eric Rodriguez:
And I’m very intentional about that call too. When they book it on my Calendly app, I have exactly what they need to have ready questions, they need to be ready to answer, they have to fill out a profile, etcetera. And it’s really something that probably takes them like two minutes to do. And then if that meeting goes really well, let’s say somebody that is a perfect fit for me, they’re in my niche, we hit it off. Then we do the next meeting, which is called a relationship fit meeting. And that’s basically an hour long call where we’re reviewing some life planning surveys that they filled out. They have a little bit of homework before that call, which again is a filter for me because if a client doesn’t do these two or three things, then it’s… They’re gonna be a nightmare of a client to work with. ‘Cause they’re never gonna get back to me.
Abby Morton:
Yeah, yeah. At this stage, if they don’t follow through that with that homework, would you kind of basically walk away from them or say like, this isn’t gonna work?
Eric Rodriguez:
Yeah, I let them know. I need to probably reschedule this meeting ’cause I like to review these items before the call so I’m well prepared. And just… It just really drives a good conversation. And so if they don’t do it, I give them one chance and say, okay, let’s reschedule. I need these things. And then if they… I’ll know within a few days whether they’re serious or not, and then I just kind of move on. But usually it’s… I would say it’s probably 90% of the time people follow through and they… And they do it.
Abby Morton:
Okay, cool.
Eric Rodriguez:
And so in that meeting it’s really about understanding their financial satisfaction level. What are their priorities? What are they looking for a short-term relationship long-term? Do they have any life transitions they wanna talk about to like maybe they’re getting a divorce, maybe they’re having a baby, maybe they’re getting married, maybe they wanna buy a house. Maybe they got a new job, maybe their company’s going IPO, who knows. Right? So these are all conversations that we have. So that’s like the first like 20 minutes. And again, it’s the start of the life planning process. And then after that I spend about 15 minutes talking a little bit about myself, how long I’ve been in the business, my service offering, what it’s like to be a client of mine, my fees, service calendar, tech that I use, you name it. And then we have about a 15, 20-minute Q&A.
Eric Rodriguez:
And after that I’ll send them a proposal and then it’s really up to them on if they wanna move forward or not. I find that the best way to get new clients is to not be salesy and not try to close them or whatever. Sometimes the best sale is the non-sale. That’s a little secret of mine.
Abby Morton:
I like that.
Eric Rodriguez:
But let… You know. So that’s like the first two meetings. And then we’ll have like a get organized meeting and then after that… And that’s just really just reviewing all the items I need. I’ll introduce tech if need be. So that’s when I’ll introduce like the Elements app and I’ll introduce… I’ll kind of walk them through like what they need to do and connect their accounts and so forth. And then from there there’s two big meetings. So there’s one goals discovery meeting, which is all life planning focused. So it’s all life planning. We’re going over their goals, their values, maybe some people that have been influential in their lives from a financial perspective. Kind of just identify again those key priorities.
Eric Rodriguez:
We’ll talk about… You know, they’ve… At this point they’ve done some homework too. We’ll talk about like how they visualize their future when it comes to their money and their family and what and what have you. And then the follow-up call is a data discovery call where that’s just literally making sure I have everything I need in Elements app, I have all documents, tax returns, pay stubs, equity comp agreements, etcetera. Everything I need to start running their plan. And then what I do is I do a wealth plan delivery meeting and I’ll leverage the Elements scorecard.
Eric Rodriguez:
So actually before I leverage the Elements scorecard I review this resource that Money Quotient gives us. It’s called the key elements to creating your financial plan. And it talks about… It’s a summary of what I’ve captured over the past four meetings that we’ve had. Right? So it’s their values, it’s goals they wanna achieve, concerns they wanna address, transitions they wanna plan for, those types of things. And so it’s all bullet pointed, highlighted, and then I confirm with them that I’ve captured everything. If I didn’t, I’ll go back. But usually I capture everything. And then I go into the Elements scorecard, give them a quick assessment.
Eric Rodriguez:
I don’t go over every element ’cause not every client needs that, but I’ll highlight maybe like three to four and then boom, I’ll have everything written in the one page financial plan. And I know everybody uses the one page financial plan differently, but I’ll have everything in there. And then I’ll have like a pretty comprehensive implementation schedule for the next 12 months that the clients work with me. There you go.
Abby Morton:
I love it. No, it’s like very comprehensive and I feel like people can get a good idea of what exactly you’re doing. So let’s take a step back to the beginning. It sounds like the very beginning you’re talking about this life planning process, right? Money Quotient. For those listeners who have never heard of life planning or even Money Quotient, can you give us maybe just a little kind of background, like what does that mean? How would you explain what life planning is?
Eric Rodriguez:
Yeah. So life planning in my opinion is it’s a much more robust way to get people to make action on their… On their financial priorities or take action. So versus just telling somebody, okay, you need to retire at age 65, here’s how much you need to save every month, etcetera, here’s the investments you need to have, all of that. Life planning’s interesting because you really get into what does someone even… How do they even think about money? What is it that they want to do in the next six months, 18 months, three years, five years, 10 years? Which is pretty common with a lot of my clients that are… Especially the ones that have stock options that just had this huge liquidity event. They’re more concerned with, okay, what am I gonna do like tomorrow? How can I save on tax?
Eric Rodriguez:
Should I buy a house? Should I not buy a house? Should I take a sabbatical? Should I buy some investment property? Should I diversify out of this concentrated stock? I I need something now. I really don’t care what happens at 65. I need to figure out what to do now with this huge windfall that I have. And so life planning… Life planning helps guide those conversations because again, you’re really just getting a sense of what does somebody even want to do with the money? Why do they wanna do it? And basically having them truly align their money with their values and living in the present, which is why I love Elements, living in the present because all the other tools are living in the future. And so with the younger clients and even that have equity comp, they… Or even the entrepreneurs they’re more concerned with the next five years versus the next 50 years.
Abby Morton:
Right. Yeah.
Eric Rodriguez:
So, life planning helps you prioritize this person’s money, their resources with their goals.
Abby Morton:
I love that. I love that. I think it’s so important. Clients that maybe have a hard time, like I often think of myself and it’s funny ’cause I’m a financial planner. I talk about like values and goals and financial purpose and how important that is for my clients. And I think, well, how would I set that for myself? Like, how do you help a client work through that? That might almost be coming at planning with like, “Hey, I just want you to help me with this like, chunk of money and what should I do with it?” How do you kind of work them through maybe that challenge of taking a step back and thinking about their goals? How would you help them through that challenge and struggle?
Eric Rodriguez:
Yeah. I think… Again, this is not a Money Quotient commercial, but I think that’s where Money Quotient comes in because there’s so many tools that you can use to help guide a client and to kind of just get them to open up. Because oftentimes when I meet with prospects, there’s a flawed view of what it is to go through the financial planning process. Some people just…
Abby Morton:
Totally.
Eric Rodriguez:
Yeah. Some people just think all we do is money management.
Abby Morton:
Investments right? Yeah. Yeah. No. I was just on a webinar earlier today, where like, what do people do when you find out you’re a planner? And everyone’s like investments, investments, investments. And I’m like, it’s so true. That’s like… My grandpa still thinks I’m a stock broker, and I’m like, “Oh my gosh, how many times I’ve had to explain this to you?”
Eric Rodriguez:
Yeah. No, it just… With clients, and I set this expectation up front too, when I meet with clients, I say, “Look, I do things a little bit differently. I do things much differently than probably a lot of advisors that work for big wire house or insurance company or whatever, I do things a lot differently.” I lead with advice, and we talk more about… Legitimately, what do you want to do with your money now? Like for example… I’ll give a personal example. So I’m CFP, and we’re saving for retirement, but I’m not saving every single dollar into my retirement account. We purchased Disneyland passes because our kids are five and seven, and my wife loves Disneyland, we all love Disneyland. Now, we live pretty close to Disneyland. The $2500 a year or whatever it costs for Disneyland passes instead of putting into our Roth IRAs or whatever. No, we wanna live life now, we wanna be able to use our money now and create memories, and then same goes for… We just purchased e-bikes, electric bikes. I don’t know if they’re popular where you guys are?
Abby Morton:
No. Totally. Yeah.
Eric Rodriguez:
Where we live, it’s very popular ’cause it’s so hill and we live very close to the beach, and so it’s just one of those things and they’re not really expensive, but they’re also not very cheap. But again, same thing, we could have put a couple of thousand dollars into savings or whatever, but no, we value experiences and value doing fun things. So when I meet with a client and I kinda share some examples, and we can really just dive in and say, well, actually you have the complete opposite of what a traditional financial plan should look like, because… Let me throw this out there, because you wanna stop working in five years, you wanna get out of tech, you wanna be self-employed, you wanna open a flower shop or whatever it is, right? You wanna live in Mexico for a year.
Eric Rodriguez:
That’s not a traditional financial plan. An advisor that doesn’t practice life planning, it would be really difficult for them to get all this information and get this ideal vision of someone’s future by just focusing on what we’re taught in CFP school, basic financial stuff. Could it happen maybe but the intention behind life planning and the good questions that you ask, I really just ask questions and get people to open up, and then they just over-share and over-share and over-share. It’s almost like therapy, it’s like financial therapy, and it’s fun for me, ’cause all I’m doing is just repeating what people are telling me…
Abby Morton:
Yeah, you’re like, I look like the amazing person and I’m just asking the question.
Eric Rodriguez:
So you wanna go out of debt, you want to buy the new car, you wanna go on vacation, you wanna do this and wanna do that. Okay, well, let’s do it. And they’re like, “Wait, what?” Yeah. What a concept, right? Let’s action these things and let’s make a plan so that you can actually live your ideal life.
Abby Morton:
Yeah, no, I like that. I think that is comforting to know, it’s just… Are you gonna be able to… Or how do you help pull that out? And knowing that I think it’s really important. So transitioning a little bit to maybe a separate question, but along the same lines, I think we often hear the problem with Elements is the sense that it doesn’t gather enough information. I don’t have enough of the data. Forever, we’ve been taught in CFP school that we need to gather… Literally, I remember even my early, early days of Dennis Advisors, if they’re not gonna give us all this data at the very beginning, then we’ll never get it. So I’m not moving on until I literally have every piece of data from the client. And I think I especially have even moved away from that mentality, and I think Elements even teaches that as well, right? Like how can you get the right data to make an initial decision and then move forward and dig in to get that extra data you need? You even said sometimes you don’t even need to look at all of the Elements. You can just look at some of them.
Abby Morton:
So has that been maybe a problem for you, or how can you help other advisors who feel like I don’t have enough of the information that I need, I feel like I need all of this information. How can you help maybe with that mind frame?
Eric Rodriguez:
Yeah, two things again, life planning. If someone gives you two or three priorities, okay, let’s talk about those, and maybe it’s just a cash flow issue, maybe it’s just a tax issue, and then we can dial and focus on those. The second thing, one of the things that I do is I do that get organized or sometimes I call it a welcome meeting, and I really… I’m so intentional about, Look, we’re gonna use this… We’re gonna use a lot of great tech. The one I’m gonna share with you first as Elements. I need you to connect as many accounts as possible, I need you to put in as much information here as possible.
Eric Rodriguez:
I set that expectation up front because then I can’t really do my job. However, if they don’t do it, which it happens then in the other data discovery meeting, if I don’t have that info, I’m spending that whole time just kinda holding their hand through that process of just getting information at least as much as we can, so that I can at least give a very high level overview. I will say this though, with Elements, it’s much easier to provide some output even if they don’t give you all the information, versus other tools that I’ve used. I’ve used every other tool, and I still use some of them, if it makes sense. Every other tool on the marketplace, but what I found with Elements is that there’s less failure points because I don’t literally need everything, whereas with some of the other tools to get the Monte Carlo. To get the 100% probability of success, you literally need everything, with Elements you don’t. So that’s been really helpful to be nimble. Yeah.
Abby Morton:
Okay, awesome. Tell me… Maybe do you have a specific example where Elements you think either earned you that client that you didn’t think you could get on previously? That was very salesy. I didn’t mean to say it like that, right? But you were able to bring on the client that maybe you hadn’t previously or Elements was able to help you have a better conversation or in a new light… Like it brought things differently than maybe you had used previously?
Eric Rodriguez:
Yeah. So I’ll give you a good example of how I use Elements with other tech stacks because I don’t think advisors should use Elements as the one all be-all, but I think it’s a very good complement to others. So for example, in my specific niche, working with equity comp folks or founders. So let’s say for example, a company files their S1 and they’re gonna go IPO, so I’ll usually get a call 15 days before the company goes public and everyone’s just like, “Oh, I need help in… ” And so it’s just kind of like this never-ending. Just everyone is running around their heads chopped off type of thing, chicken running around their head chopped off.
Abby Morton:
Totally.
Eric Rodriguez:
And so Elements is great ’cause I can get a quick snapshot, boom of their financial health. But then I use another software. It’s called Trayecto, T-R-A-Y-E-C-T-O for equity comp planning. On that tool, I put in all their grant information, I put in their stock price, I put in their payroll information, the pay stubs, so that I can just do tax projections, and so when I’m meeting with the client, we’ll go through Elements, and then specifically when we talk about the tax element or the investments, then all transitions to Trayecto and say, “Okay, here’s what it looks like.” Blah, blah, blah, blah.
Eric Rodriguez:
So that has been super helpful for me, when a client comes in. Because I had a client where this happened, and with an old tool I was using, I just found myself just putting in all this information into the tool, and then I would look at it and be like, Okay, but how am I gonna help them? They’re gonna go public in 15 days. I gotta just do my own calculation. So I ended up having this blue… All these Google Sheets, I was notorious to have 50 different Google Sheets. And I’m like, I just wanted to lose the spreadsheets and then consolidating everything, putting into a one-page plan. It was just not sustainable. And it was a lot of hours spent.
Eric Rodriguez:
So yeah, just having a tool as more of a diagnostic financial assessment to keep someone on track and then augmenting it with other softwares that are specific to my niche, has been super impactful for my business. And honestly, it just has accelerated my planning time, ’cause before I used the average, I don’t know, like 15 hours to do a plan. And now it’s like, I don’t know three to five, if I’m using the tech the right way.
Abby Morton:
Yeah, no, I mean that’s a huge transit, 15 down to three to five, that’s really amazing and a really big game change. I think oftentimes advisors get into planning, and I know I’m so guilty of this. Like I get into answering the question and then you have to research this and look at that, ’cause there are so many different questions that can come in for all different clients. And so you spend so many hours and then typing up the email with all of your information back to them. I think I spent hours on things then like the day’s over, and I’ve answered one client’s questions. [laughter] It’s almost like we’re all, I’m sure, guilty of doing things like that. You’re honestly just wanting to be a good steward, right? Of like, I’m looking at every angle, I’m thinking about everything, and I’m giving good advice. And I understand that time trap. So I think it’s good that you’re smart in using the tools in the right way to help save you time. It sounds like that’s been a big game changer for you.
Eric Rodriguez:
It’s totally has. And before I was using Elements, I was really just using one software and I still use it. It’s RightCapital, I still use it for complex stuff. But I have a specific client that they’re doing very well as a family, it’s a younger family, one self-employed, one works for tech company. And they were just on the fence about major life decisions. I had all these different scenarios in the RightCapital and we finally solidified one. We’re like, “Okay, you’re not gonna do that, you’re not gonna buy the house, you’re gonna stay put and keep saving,” da da da da da. And then two months had passed, the plan was done, we started implementing it and they said, “Actually, we change their mind. Actually, we want to sell our house and we wanna buy this 25 million house, and then we wanna send the kids to private school as well.”
Abby Morton:
Oh my gosh.
Eric Rodriguez:
And we wanna buy this classic car. I’m like, “Wait, okay, I gotta go back, gotta do a whole re-plan.” Then two months later, “Actually, we’re gonna keep our home, we’re gonna rent it out.”
Abby Morton:
No way.
Eric Rodriguez:
Then we’re going to just use our cash to buy another house, and what does that look like? Anyways, I found myself just doing so many re-plans and what I found is when I started using Elements, I was like, Okay, this is really simple, this is really easy to do. And then I started just comparing their total term score, which is basically a financial independence. If they made certain moves, their LT liquidity score, all these different things. And it was so much easier to communicate and to send them a three to five minute Loom video and say, “Hey, here’s my recommendation, this is where it’s gonna start looking uncomfortable. This is what it’s gonna impact you here,” boom, boom, boom.
Abby Morton:
I love this where you’re going. Can you go a little bit more specific? Let’s assume all our listeners know the LT and the TT, you could even use that jargon, but can you be more specific? ‘Cause I love this. Like how are you using Elements to answer those questions and all the different scenarios that this couple wanted to go through?
Eric Rodriguez:
Yeah, so it really comes down to… For them, they wanted to keep their total term. Or their goal was to get the 25 total term. And they wanted to keep their LT. I think they were at nine or something like that.
Abby Morton:
Good. A very good LT.
Eric Rodriguez:
Yeah, 0.9.
Abby Morton:
Okay, keep going.
Eric Rodriguez:
And remember, one of them is self-employed. So it was really important for them to have much cash on hand and that much liquidity in case that person lost their job. So just those two alone, along with the debt rate, those three Elements alone, really easy to manipulate on the tool and say, Here’s… If you buy a new house, here’s what the payment is gonna be, here’s the mortgage you’re gonna have. Here’s what your debt rate will be, this is gonna be unhealthy, here’s what your LT score will be. This is not what you wanted, and it’s gonna push back your total term to X amount or X number, it’s gonna decrease it by five points or whatever it is. Just kind of pulling from the different Elements to tell a story and not a story that’s important to me. But more so, these are the conversations we had in the beginning of our relationship, and I know things change. But the most important things you all wanted was financial security, and you don’t wanna make any bad moves, which is why you hired me. So I’m giving you these two to three different pieces of information so that you all can make an informed decision.
Eric Rodriguez:
And then they would get back to me and they would say, “Well, what if we buy a house that’s 300,000 cheaper? What does that look like? Or what if we end up selling this house and roll the equity over?” So there is some other manual calculations, but leading with the scorecard, leading with life hang also enables me to tell a really good story and communicate to the client in a way that is unbiased and really helps them fulfill their vision of their financial future.
Abby Morton:
I love that, I think that’s so amazing. And I would like to say, I’m gonna step out and say, You know, I’m sure seeing the element and see how those changed and knowing this was my target number was a nine for LT, and now it’s going down to a five or four. I’m sure that meant a lot more to a client that a probability of success or… It seems like you’re gonna still be okay, but having these actual solid numbers and seeing those numbers change, I’m assuming meant a lot more to the client at the end.
Eric Rodriguez:
It definitely did. And I think when I describe what I do to prospective clients is I do present day financial planning, the real-time financial plan. We’re talking about what’s going on today, this moment in time. We’re not talking about 10 years from now, we’re not talking about whatever. Like how are these decisions you’re gonna make gonna impact you in the next 12 months? And how would you feel knowing that you lost five years of liquidity or that you’re gonna have to push out financial independence by 10 years, because of this move you’re gonna potentially make today? And that really, in my opinion, resonates with clients more than 90%, 80% or what have you.
Abby Morton:
Well, that’s so great. So, so great. Okay, so just trying to wrap things up here, I love to ask all of my guests this question at the very end. And as you’ve kind of talked about a lot today, that Elements is a little different way of financial planning than ever before. So I’d love to know from your perspective, how has your mindset shifted since you started engaging with Elements?
Eric Rodriguez:
Oh, this is an easy one. So I’m happier.
Abby Morton:
Oh, this is a new response, I love it.
Eric Rodriguez:
Let’s be real. I love what I do, but I don’t love looking at spreadsheets every day, and I have my HP 12C here, I don’t love doing all of that every single day. I love doing this, I love having conversations, I love meeting with clients to talk about their goals their dreams, aspirations, etcetera. So with Elements, I’m happier doing the financial planning process because as I mentioned, I cut down the time it takes to really share something impactful with clients and something meaningful and something that they wanna be excited about. So it’s simple, it’s fun, as you probably saw, it’s pretty comprehensive as well, my planning process. But one of the things I’ve realized is, I think it’s infectious. Like my enthusiasm, especially when I’m talking to clients, and I’m so pumped up to talk about their scores and how we’re gonna implement it and what have you. And I just find way more client engagement now than I ever have in my entire financial planning career, ever. So that brings me joy. And it’s using Elements, and again, and I’m still getting better at using it too. I wouldn’t even say I’m an expert, I think I’m pretty good at it, but I’ve only been using it for 10 months. But yeah, it’s been really fun.
Abby Morton:
That’s awesome. I love that response. Alright, Eric, any final thoughts you’d like to leave our listeners with?
Eric Rodriguez:
No, I just think these podcasts are awesome, I listen to all of them, I always get nuggets from every single one. So I appreciate you, Abby, having me on and maybe I’ll come back some day.
Abby Morton:
Yeah, that’d be great. I mentioned this at the beginning. I was trying to think about pulling in the social media aspect into this, and I just thought the life planning and everything you’re doing there, I wanted to go in deeper there. So we’ll have to have you back on a future episode to talk about social media. But if people wanna go find you or reach out to you, where can they find you today?
Eric Rodriguez:
Yeah, so my handle on Instagram is double E rod 10, eerod10 is my hands. I’m very active there. TikTok, I guess Threads now [laughter] but more so on Instagram than anything.
Abby Morton:
Okay, awesome. Feel free to reach out to him then. Again, thank you, I’d love to have you back on a future show to talk about all you’ve done on social media, but always a joy to have you. Appreciate your time.
Eric Rodriguez:
Cool, thank you.
[music]
Abby Morton:
Next time on Elementality.
Carl Richards:
Instead of thinking about it as a marketing brochure, calling it… Well, an essay it is structurally different, so it’s not just like a marketing brochure called the white paper. But when I think of white paper, I think of an academic paper that is designed to solve a problem. I’ve identified a challenge and I’m going to lay out a thesis on how to solve that problem. And there is an element, and maybe this is why it appealed to me, was there was an element of credibility, and I’ve always struggled growing up in the wrong side of town, not… I’ve always struggled with having credibility. So I remember earlier on…
Abby Morton:
We all do. Carl, we all do.
Carl Richards:
Yeah. It is fine. It’s the imposter syndrome problem, which is great, but the idea of the white paper was really helpful.
Abby Morton:
To find out more about Elements, go to getelements.com/demo. Elementality executive producers are Reese Harper and Carl Richards. Elementality is produced by Tad Henderson and directed by Abby Morton. Have a good one.